Harnessing Microorganisms for Biomining: Unveiling the Power of Microbial Mining

Biomining, an emerging technology, utilizes biological substances to extract valuable metals from their ores. The term microbial mining is particularly used to describe the use of microorganisms in the extraction of metals. The mining industry is growing rapidly as metal demand increases, leading to the discovery of new, profitable, and cheap mining processes. Crucial mining industries highly demanded, and have extensive usage in daily life, attract researchers to use microorganisms for this approach. This review article aimed to provide comprehensive and updated knowledge about microbial mining that covered its different aspects. various databases like Google Scholars, Science Directs, and Scopus etc., were searched for the relevant terms and the related literature was downloaded, analyzed, and screened for literature. The fact that microorganisms are present everywhere and are already in use in different applications leads to the concept of microbial mining. In the soil, microbes have different effects on soil topology and have different interactions with metals, as some elements are crucial for their growth too. Different microorganisms, i.e., Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans, are studied for their mining potential, and currently, a good number of microbes are used in this industry. The peculiar properties of these microbes include their growth at low pH and high temperatures and their ability to not alter the composition of the metals. Microbial mining has both pros and cons; it is environmentally friendly, economically cheap, and easy to approach, but it is a complex process and has low productivity. Understanding and adopting microbial mining will attract industrialists around the globe and thus not only aid the country’s economy but can also help with climate change.