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Extracting copper and cobalt from non-ferrous residues by iron- and sulfur-oxidizing bacteria

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Abstract

How to recycle metals from the waste resources becomes a hotspot all around the world. Non-ferrous residues, which was produced by non-ferrous melting industry, and various of Cu and Co compounds exist in the residues in the form of CuxOy, CuxSy, CoxSy. In order to efficiently extract valuable metals from the non-ferrous residues, this study investigated the bioleaching behavior of Cu and Co from non-ferrous residues, using iron-oxidizing bacteria (IOB, Leptospirillum ferriphilum CS13) and sulfur-oxidizing bacteria (SOB, Acidithiobacillus caldus S2) by controlling the microbial composition, initial pH, and initial ferrous ion concentration. The results showed that IOB had a better performance on extracting Cu and Co than that of SOB, especially for Cu. Furthermore, 77.7 and 79.8% of Cu and Co were extracted under the optimal ratio of the initial number of IOB and SOB (1:1) after bioleaching, which was more than that when bioleaching by any one of these two kinds of bacteria. However, the changes of initial pH and ferrous ion concentration could not significantly enhance bioleaching performance. The results indicated that bioleaching had a good performance on recovering of metals from non-ferrous residues and excellent application prospect for the cleaner resource recycling.

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All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article.

Funding

This work was supported by the China Ocean Mineral Resources R&D Association (COMRA) Program (No. DY135-B2-15), National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41706221), and the Open Funding Project of National Key Laboratory of Human Factors Engineering (No. 6142222190716 and SYFD061901K).

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Author notes

  1. Jianxing Sun and Wenxian Liu contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Minerals Processing and Bioengineering, Central South University, Changsha, 410083, Hunan, People’s Republic of China

    Jianxing Sun, Wenxian Liu, Haina Cheng, Ronghui Liu, Yang Ge, Hongbo Zhou & Yuguang Wang

  2. Paddyfield Teli Middle School, Changsha, 410083, Hunan, People’s Republic of China

    Ruichang Tang

  3. Key Laboratory of Biometallurgy of Ministry of Education, Changsha, 410083, Hunan, People’s Republic of China

    Haina Cheng, Hongbo Zhou & Yuguang Wang

  4. Institute of Natural Resources and Environment, Henan University, Kaifeng, 475001, Henan, People’s Republic of China

    Kang Liu

  5. National Key Laboratory of Human Factors Engineering, China Astronauts Research and Training Center, Beijing, 100094, People’s Republic of China

    Wenhao Zhan

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  1. Jianxing Sun
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Contributions

Jianxing Sun: Conceptualization, validation, writing—reviewing and editing the manuscript

Wenxian Liu: Software, methodology, and carried out the research

Ruichang Tang: Resources, investigation

Haina Cheng: Data curation

Ronghui Liu: Software, validation

Kang Liu: Validation, data curation

Wenhao Zhan: Funding acquisition

Yang Ge: Writing—reviewing and Editing

Hongbo Zhou: Supervision, funding acquisition, reviewing, idealized the work

Yuguang Wang: Funding acquisition, reviewing and editing, idealized the work

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yuguang Wang.

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Sun, J., Liu, W., Tang, R. et al. Extracting copper and cobalt from non-ferrous residues by iron- and sulfur-oxidizing bacteria. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 38466–38475 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-13434-3

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