Extremophiles are organisms capable of adjust, survive or thrive in hostile habitats that were
previously thought to be adverse or lethal for life. Chile gathers a wide range of extreme …

Chalcopyrite is the primary copper mineral used for production of copper metal. Today, as a
result of rapid industrialization, there has been enormous demand to profitably process the …

Biomining is an increasingly applied biotechnological procedure for processing of ores in
the mining industry (biohydrometallurgy). Nowadays the production of copper from low …

The Atacama Desert of northern Chile is the oldest and most arid nonpolar environment on
Earth. It is a coastal desert covering approximately 180,000 km2, and together with the …

Mining has advanced primarily through the use of two strategies: pyrometallurgy and
hydrometallurgy. Both have been used successfully to extract valuable metals from ore …

More than 70 microbiological studies of sulfidic mine dumps and heaps have been
published. The microbiology and the relevant biogeochemical processes in the dumps and …

Bioleaching of metal sulfides is an interfacial process where biofilm formation is considered
to be important in the initial steps of this process. Among the factors regulating biofilm …

Biofilm formation plays a pivotal role in bioleaching activities of bacteria in both industrial
and natural environments. Here, by visualizing attached bacterial cells on energetic …

Heap bioleaching is one of the most clean and economical processes for recovery of low-
grade and complex ores, because the sulfide minerals are natural habitats for acidophiles …

The most exciting advances in biohydrometallurgy are occurring in the field of microbiology.
The two main technologies employed in biohydrometallurgy, agitated tanks for the …