
3 Technologies in Exploration, Mining, and Processing ...
Bioleaching and mineral biooxidation are in commercial use today (1) in dumps to scavenge copper from runofmine rock; (2) in heaps to leach copper from secondary copper ores and to pretreat preciousmetal ores in which the gold and silver are locked in a sulfidemineral matrix; and (3) in aerated, stirredtank reactors to pretreat precious ...