Biohydrometallurgy is a technique in the world of metallurgy that utilizes biological agents (bacteria) to recover and treat metals such as copper.
Modern biohydrometallurgy advances started with the bioleaching of copper more efficiently in the 1950s[1]
Hydrometallurgy refers to a specific process involving the chemical properties of water to create an aqueous solution for metal extraction through a series of chemical reactions[8] Biohydrometallurgy represents the overlap of the world of microorganisms to the process of hydrometallurgy.
[9] Biohydrometallurgy is used to perform processes involving metals, for example, microbial mining, oil recovery, bioleaching, water-treatment and others.
It is usually utilized when conventional mining procedures are too expensive or ineffective in recovering a metal such as copper, cobalt, gold, lead, nickel, uranium and zinc.