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US 11,591,669 B2Granted
Metal recovery process
AssigneeMint Innovation Limited
InventorsWill Barker, Oliver Crush
Life of this patent
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Abstract
The invention relates to a process for recovering metals from aqueous solutions or solid feedstocks such as ores and waste. In particular, the invention relates to a method of recovering a target metals using a microorganism.
Claims20
A method of recovering a target metal from a pregnant aqueous solution containing the target metal, the method comprising:
- (a) providing a pregnant aqueous solution containing target metal ions;
- (b) a biosorption step comprising contacting a microorganism with the pregnant aqueous solution such that at least a portion of the target metal ions biosorb to the microorganism, wherein the microorganism becomes a metal laden microorganism and the pregnant aqueous solution becomes a barren solution;
- (c) separating the metal laden microorganism from the barren solution;
- and
- (d) recovering the target metal from the metal laden microorganism, wherein the pregnant aqueous solution includes at least one further metal, the microorganism preferentially biosorbs the target metal over the further metal in the biosorption step, and the further metal(s) remains in the barren solution in step (c).
2 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.