Abstract
A variety of instrumental techniques indicated that gold chloride reduction on Chlorella vulgaris cells, cell fractions and amino acids involved sulphur-containing amino acids. Diode array UV spectrophotometry provided in situ kinetic data on the rapid initial adsorption and reduction of gold as AuCI4- to AuCl2-, which occurred during the first few minutes of reaction. Video-recorded light and electron microscopy gave respectively in situ and ex situ data on the slower reduction over several hours of AuCI2- to metallic gold, which formed microscopic crystalline triangular and hexagonal platelets. A mechanism based on three main sequential steps: adsorption, reduction and disproportionation was proposed. A semi-continuous process in which 1–10 ppm gold chloride solution was pumped through a glass column loosely packed with Chlorella vulgaris or Spirulina platensis as dried, alginate immobilised, 1.5 mm pellets gave complementary data on the rate and mode of gold uptake on algae in bulk form. Typically the pellets retained over 99% of the gold as < 1 μm metallic crystals from passage of more than 200 bed volumes of the solution and apparently behaved as classic shrinking cores with regard to gold distribution.
Formerly, Department of Mineral Resources Engineering, Royal School of Mines, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, London, England
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© 1994 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Gee, A.R., Dudeney, A.W.L. (1994). Bioreduction of gold on algae and with amino acids. In: Hydrometallurgy ’94. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-1214-7_19
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-1214-7_19
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