Alexander Thompson
Pronouns: he/him
Research Mentor(s): Brian Ellis
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Civil and Environmental Engineering / Engineering
Program:
Authors: Alexander Thompson, Brian Ellis
Session: Session 1: 9:00 am – 9:50 am
Poster: 64
Abstract
As we continue to extract minerals from earth’s crust, the number of deposits with a high concentration of sought after minerals is gradually decreasing. Previous research has primarily sought new methods for the extraction of valuable minerals in low concentrations using acidophilic bacteria at low pH and hydrometallurgical extraction after increasing the concentration of valuable minerals (Sarker et al.). Biological leaching of valuable minerals has proven particularly effective for low concentration ores of Copper and Cobalt, albeit with an increased amount of time required to remove the minerals (Zhang et al.). We use data from SEM and XRD to understand the composition of our samples, the concentration of targeted valuable minerals, and feasibility of using leaching methods to extract targeted valuable minerals. Due to the age of the mine tailings from our samples(Around 100 years old), we hypothesize that it will be economical to extract both copper and rare earth elements from our samples. At the moment however, we have not yet had the chance to perform any extractions as we are still assessing the composition of our samples.
