Bioleaching of Nickel Ores

Essentially, everything we use in this modern society is a product of mining, agriculture, or oil and gas industries. Mining is the process of extracting raw materials from the earth’s crust. The most important transformation of the mineral industry in the next 20 years could be the complete replacement of smelting by the hydrometallurgical processing of base metals for the sustainable development, keeping in view the societal needs.

Among metals, nickel has distinct place due to its diversified applications. Nickel is widely used as an alloying element in steels and super alloys and, amongst other application, in batteries, catalysts, coinage and plating. Bacterial leaching of nickel on a commercial basis is on the anvil. For this to happen at rapid pace, the trend that began with dump and heap leaching coupled with solvent extraction /electro winning and that was followed by bioleaching and pressure oxidation, would have to be accelerated.

This book provides state-of-the-art of bacterial leaching studies on nickel. This book is therefore a valuable contribution to the state-of-knowledge of bacterial leaching  of low-grade ores and to the efforts aimed at raising awareness among all stakeholders and informing university students, teachers and civil society about the implications and prospects of this major of bioleaching technology.