Biological treatment for the degradation of cyanide: A review

Abstract

Given that mining is considered to be an essential activity for Mexico's industrial development, cyanide has been increasingly used to recover precious metals such as gold and silver. Along with that arises the need to develop new technologies to treat the wastes (mining tailings). In addition to their high cyanide content, metal and other contaminants that are found in tailings also present a problem. As a result, conventional (physicochemical) strategies have been developed to reduce contamination from tailings, nonetheless, these have high operating costs and generate unwanted by-products. For this reason, studies have begun to focus on non-conventional strategies to treat free cyanide and cyanide complexes such as fungi, bacterial consortia, and pure bacteria. These are important because of the mechanisms involved in degrading or modifying contaminants at neutral to high pH levels, which convert contaminants into non-hazardous products. The ability of microorganisms to grow at an alkaline pH prevents HCN volatilization. These studies have been performed at the laboratory level using two types of microbial binding: suspended biomass and immobilized biomass. They have used both natural (granite rock, citrus peels, cellulose, gravel) and synthetic (stainless steel, geotextiles, alginate, plastics) packing material, as well as reactors with different types of flow, namely, batch and continuous.

Keywords

• Cyanide
• Mining
• Tailings
• Biodegradation
• Alkaliphilic microorganism