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

从采矿废料中微生物制造金属（5Ms）

• 批准号: 10075719
• 金额: $ 95.57万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Collaborative R&D
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=10075719
• 关键词: Microbial; Manufacturing; Metals; Mineral; Mining

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.

随着全球人口和经济继续以惊人的速度增长，这对制造日常电子产品、救生医疗设备和未来清洁能源技术(即太阳能电池板、风力涡轮机、电动汽车电池等)所需的金属的需求不断增加。未来几十年，五种主要金属(锂、镍、钴、铜和稀土元素)的需求量将呈指数级增长。传统的采矿做法使用高消耗的能源和化学品来动员金属，并确保盈利，各行业倾向于使用高品位金属矿石作为原材料，这导致了快速的消耗。这些采矿做法产生了数百万吨作为尾矿产生的废物，它们以大坝的形式存在，给世界的景观留下了伤痕。由于矿石品位下降(矿石品位低会产生明显更多的尾矿废物)，废物的数量也在增加。然而，尾矿中仍然含有有价值的金属，对这些金属的再加工可以将这些感知到的废物转化为替代的有价值的资源。现在，通过建立新的生物制造工艺，从尾矿中提取金属的领域可能发生变革。将废弃矿物加工(即废弃矿物的非晶化)领域与微生物生物反应器系统相结合，具有巨大的潜力来解决清洁金属制造的未来，这也是从输出的循环经济。该项目联合体将建立可持续的微生物生物制造工艺，从矿山尾矿中提取关键的重要金属。这个5MS项目将提供一个优化的微生物生物反应器演示模型，并将展示如何将生产和加工的(球形)生物质颗粒用于二级市场应用，以完成循环经济循环，并完成生命周期和技术经济分析。