Talk:Biohydrometallurgy

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Wellensg.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 16:03, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Merge proposal

• Biohydrometallurgy, bioleaching, and biomining are similar topics: use of microbes to help liberate metals from ores. "Biomining" is kind of a misnomer because the microbes do no mining, they participate is the solubilization or liberation of valued metals. Bioleaching and biomining achieve this goal by solubilizing. The distinction is subtle. Solubilizing ions from ores is the core of conventional hydrometallurgy: (quoting from Wikipedia) "Hydrometallurgy uses solutions to recover metals from ores".
• Biohydrometallurgy, bioleaching, and biomining were written as homework assignments for undergraduate students.
• Biohydrometallurgy, bioleaching and biomining are niche (read: rarely economical because microbes nibble away at rocks slowly, and time is money) topics with a thin supporting literature. These topics are somewhat aspirational and lean into save-the-planet concepts.
• Wikipedia has few or no active editors in this theme, so it is difficult to maintain three flimsy topics vs one less flimsy one. The combined article would be good for readers to appreciate these fields. Even biohydrometallurgy is an esoteric concept.

--Smokefoot (talk) 20:54, 12 March 2026 (UTC)