The increasing complexity of industrial and consumer products, especially the transition to carbon-neutral energy production has created a rapidly rising demand for various metals. The need for some of them like lithium, cobalt and rare earth elements are projected to rise at least in order of a magnitude in coming decades. At the same time, metal-rich ores bodies are increasingly becoming exhausted, causing shift towards low-content sources. However, most established methods of metal extraction such as pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy are polluting and with high energy demand. These factors, together with increasing energy and CO2 prices have created a perfect storm where demand for metals are increasing but the supply has become economically unfeasible in EU. This has lead to a situation where some non-democratic countries with less stringent environmental regulations and histroy of using trade leverages for geopolitical gains are controlling the import of most of the Critical Raw Materials (CRMs) supply to the EU. Recognizing this potential hazard to its industry, EU has made achieveing strategic autonomy a political priority. The solution exists in the form of numerous low-grade ores and technical waste stream, accumulated in various EU countries over decades of mining/extraction activity. While considered low-grade, the overall amount of REE-s and other metals is sufficient to satisfy EU-s demand for decades to come. These sources are, however, economically unprofitable to be exploited with legacy methods, so there is a high demand for a method that can extract metals efficiently, being at the same time environmentally friendly.
Bioleaching, a method of metal separation utilizing microorganisms fits the bill by being non-polluting and having a low energy demand. While efficient in lab-scale, the issues with leaching speed, material specificity, cost-efficiency and upscaling have hampered its widespread industrial use. We aimed to address these issues by developing BiotaTec’s robust bioleaching method termed BiotaMet into industrially applicable solution.
