Microbial Recovery and Recycling of Critical and Rare Earth Elements from Wastes

Metals such as lithium (Li), copper (Cu), palladium (Pd), gold (Au), indium (In), beryllium (Be), and other essential and rare earth elements are present in end of life electronic wastes, industrial discharges, mining residues and other municipal solid waste. Pollution caused by these wastes are rapidly increasing and the exaggerated disposal of these wastes is generating hazardous effects on the environment and living organisms. Millions of tons of E-wastes, mining overburdens and urban solid waste pollutants are now awaiting the development of more efficient and useful recycling solutions. Recovery of base and critical elements from electronic trash reduces not only the extraction of these elements from natural resources but also the pollution caused by dangerous compounds discharged from these wastes when incorrectly disposed of. With approximately 15 billion tons of urban ores produced globally, bioleaching and biorecovery technologies offer opportunities to recover and utilize these valuable metals from this solid waste, avoiding the release of hazardous chemicals into the environment. The extraction of metal from these secondary sources by bioleaching processes appears as a current and future requirement. However, there is a rising demand for improved research in the field of bioleaching so that a sophisticated technology with greater efficiency and output than the present one may be created for the ever-increasing discharge of E-waste each year. Synthetic biology approaches towards the recycling and recovery of metals from secondary waste streams have added an additional aspect to the growth of microbial bioleaching and biorecovery.

This topical collection will provide a global scenario of electronic, mining, industrial and urban solid pollutants; their generation sources, fate, transport, and composition analysis with their hazardous effects; and will focus on the recycling of Critical and Rare Earth Elements through the microbial bioleaching and biorecovery processes. This issue will focus on diverse novel and native microorganisms involved in base and critical element recovery from diverse wastes; understanding possible mechanisms of microbial bioleaching process, advanced molecular and bioinformatics techniques for efficient recovery of metals, commercial bioleaching operations; and upcoming aspects of this eco-friendly technique.