Selective Parameters and Bioleaching Kinetics for Leaching Vanadium from Red Mud Using Aspergillus niger and Penicillium tricolor

Abstract

In the present study, using Aspergillus niger and Penicillium tricolor, the influence of the selected parameters, including sucrose concentration, inoculation size of spores, pulp density, and pre-culture time, on the bioleaching efficiency (biomass, organic acids production, and vanadium extraction, respectively) of red mud were studied. The bioleaching kinetics under optimal conditions were also explored. Sucrose concentration showed a positive linear effect on bioleaching efficiency below 143.44 and 141.82 g/L using A. niger and P. tricolor, respectively. However, a higher concentration was unfavorable for vanadium extraction. The inoculation size of spores showed an insignificant effect on both biomass and vanadium extraction if it exceeded the lowest coded levels (0.5 × 107/mL). Red mud pulp density showed a negative effect on the bioleaching efficiency of A. niger but a positive effect on organic acids production and vanadium extraction of P. tricolor. A pre-culture was indispensable for A. niger but not for P. tricolor due to the fact of its isolation from the red mud examined in this study. The kinetics analysis showed that the leaching rate of vanadium followed a two-domain behavior: initially, a rapid leaching period of approximately 10–15 days and, subsequently, a slow leaching period. Considering the change of the particles’ appearance as well as in the elemental composition of the bioleached red mud, it is speculated that the rate of leaching agents through the silicon minerals was the rate-limiting step of dissolution kinetics under the fungal bioleaching process.

Towards Bioleaching of a Vanadium Containing Magnetite for Metal Recovery

“…of these studies reported that biogenic organic acids (culture supernatants) outperformed chemical leaching of comparable assays with pure organic acids (Reed et al, 2016;Qu et al, 2019).…”

“…Bioleaching strategies have also been tested for vanadium recovery including oxidative and organic acid leaching from spent catalysts by Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans, Acidithiobacillus thiooxidans, and Aspergillus niger (Muddanna and Baral, 2019;Mikoda et al, 2020;Pradhan et al, 2021); shale by At. ferrooxidans (He et al, 2019); red mud with the fungi A. niger and Penicillium tricolor (Qu et al, 2019); and steel slag by a mixed consortium of acidophilic bacteria dominated by At. ferrooxidans and At.…”

Investigation of Vanadium-Containing Sludge Oxidation Roasting Process for Vanadium Extraction

“…The main raw materials for vanadium extraction are titanomagnetite ores [11][12][13][14][15]. Vanadium can be extracted from coal, spent catalysts, ash from thermal power plants, and other sources [16][17][18][19][20][21]. Russia is one of the world s leading producer of vanadium.…”

Study of Microbial Cultures for the Bioleaching of Scandium from Alumina Industry By-Products

“…Many studies have investigated the bioleaching of different ores and industrial wastes [24][25][26]; only a few, however, involve the bioleaching of BR, especially for REE extraction [18,22,27]. Fungal strains such as Penicillium tricolor [18,27] and Aspergillus niger [27][28][29] and microalgae [30] such as Desmodesmus quadricauda, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, and Parachlorella kessleri have been investigated. However, the main disadvantages of the use of fungi and microalgae compared to bacteria are the generation of a large amount of biomass and spores, which increase the cost of the process and cause secondary pollution, and the separation of BR particles from fungal biomass after bioleaching is challenging [22].…”