BioMinE:An integrated project for developing biohydrometallurgy in Europe——Executive summary of its activities and outputs after three years

Biohydrometallurgy is the offspring of the unexpected union of biotechnology and metallurgy.From specific properties of some extreme biotopes,active principles of interactions between microbial metabolisms and minerals have been extracted to be used as efficient metallurgical processes.Many profitable industrial operations based on these bioprocesses have been running to recover copper,gold,uranium or cobalt for instance and many other applications have been designed.Europe was quite active in this area ...