Sujata Dabolkar and Nandkumar M. Kamat
Abstract
Bio-oxidation refers to a pre-treatment process that uses bacteria to catalyse the degradation of mineral sulphides, usually pyrite or arsenopyrite, which host Gold, silver or both. Biomining through bioleaching and bio-oxidation recovers desired metals at the required specifications with lower environmental impact and costs from ores and waste streams. During this study Novel Sulphur Oxidizing Bacteria (NOSOB) was isolated from the Banded Iron Formation of Goa and this was used for the bio-oxidation of separated Gold sulphide from the same samples. The experiment was set up in a Immobilized reaction system for the Biooxidation of Gold sulphide.