China Nonferrous Metallurgy

A large number of rare earth resources exist in tailings and industrial waste residues, the grade is low, but the total amount is considerable. Using biological leaching technology to extract rare earth elements from low grade rare earth resources is a lowcost and environmentally friendly green metallurgical process. The process adopts the microorganisms including bacteria and fungi, the different microbial leaching of rare earth elements and the mechanism of action between microbes and rare earth elements are described, showing that the current method using microbial leaching ore extraction of rare earth elements also has certain limitations, mainly including complexity of metal elements, difficult separation of rare earth elements and single rare earth element; lower rare earth content than those of inorganic acid and organic acid leaching; microorganisms prone to decay or even die under the condition of high rare earth concentration. At last, it is pointed out that the extraction technology of rare earth elements is developing towards the reduction, harmlessness, resource recovery direction. The combination of biotechnology and extraction technology provides an economical and feasible method.