Microbial Manufacturing of Metals from Mineral Mining Waste (5Ms)

As the global population and economies continue to grow at alarming rates, this places ever-increasing demands for metals needed to manufacture everyday electronics, life-saving medical equipment and for the future of clean energy technologies (i.e., solar panels, wind turbines, batteries for electric vehicles etc). The amounts required for the five key metals (_i.e., lithium, Nickel, cobalt, copper, and rare earth elements_-REEs) will grow exponentially over the next few decades.

Conventional mining practices use high consumption of energy and chemicals for metal mobilisation, and to ensure profitability, industries tend to use high-grade metal ores as raw material, which is leading to rapid depletion. These mining practices result in millions of tons of waste produced as mine-tailings, which reside as dams scarring the landscapes of the world. This volume of waste material is also increasing due to declining ore grades (_as low ore grades produce significantly more tailings waste_). However, mine-tailings still contain valuable metals, reprocessing of which can turn this perceived waste into alternate valuable resource.

Transformational change is now possible in the field of metal extraction from mine-waste tailings by establishing novel Biomanufacturing processes. Intersecting the field of waste mineral processing (i.e., amorphisation of waste mineral ores) with microbial bioreactor systems holds enormous potential to address the future of clean metal manufacturing, which also focus on the circular economy from the outset.

This project consortium will establish sustainable microbial biomanufacturing processes to extract key important metals from mine-waste tailings. This 5Ms project will deliver an optimised microbial bioreactor demonstrator model and will show how the biomass produced and processed (spherical) particles will be utilised for secondary market applications to complete the circular economy loop, complete with Life Cycle and technoeconomic analysis.