Faiza Tehseen

Biomining can help minimise mining costs and tackle a multitude of environmental issues confronting Pakistan, said Abdul Bashir, chief geologist at Koh-e-Daleel Minerals Private Limited, a Balochistan-based mining firm.

Talking to WealthPK, he said, “Biomining is cheap and simple. It also effectively exploits low-grade metal sources, including mine tailings. Mostly, by using the traditional methods, the mine tailings are treated as being uneconomical. However, the biomining techniques make it possible to properly treat the mine tailings by extracting every grain of useful material.” He said that biomining was the process used to extract metals from ores or solid materials with the help of living organisms, including plants, fungi, or prokaryotes. “Usually, very low energy is consumed during biomining. It is environment-friendly as very few microbial quantities of gases or organic acids are produced as by-products. Through the biomining technique, metals can be extracted at an extreme level while the conventional methods are not very supportive in this regard. This is the reason that low recovery causes financial losses to the miners.” Bashir said, “Energy consumption is another key area in the mining activity. Energy accounts for a substantial portion of overall mining expenses.

Companies are turning to renewable energy and energy-efficient equipment to minimise the footprints of greenhouse gases and lower production costs.”  He said the need for sustainable mining practices had never been more pressing than now because the demand for strategic and other minerals was increasing. “So, biomining is an authentic method of recovering more metal by using reduced refining setups.” Highlighting the importance of biomining in Pakistan, geologist and miner Imran Babar told WealthPK, “Biomining is no doubt a smart technique to recover the maximum amounts of metals from the raw material or mine tailings. But, in our country, only geoscientists and a few educated miners practice this. Promoting its use can help reduce production costs and environmental impacts caused by traditional mining activities.” He stressed the need to launch a national awareness programme for the stakeholders, highlighting the importance of rare earth elements, and their exploitation, handling, processing and marketing.

Credit: INP-WealthPk