Application Potential of Biohydrometallurgy in the Iranian Mining Industry

Several studies and different successful commercial applications had demonstrated that bioleaching can be an innovative approach that is capable to provide mining industry opportunities for essential growth in the medium term[2-18]. To identify the commercial application potential of bioleaching in Iranian copper industry, a research program was initiated. The objective of the main part of this program was to evaluate bacterial leaching processes for copper recovery from (i) high grade ores and flotation concentrates and (ii) low grade ores and flotation tailings. The latest results of these studies indicates the general operability of the bioleaching in both cases. At optimum conditions, the copper extraction from low grade materials was more than 80% and that from high grade ores and flotation concentrates about 95%, which should be high enough to justify the process economically.