46 Research to Accelerate Recovery of Critical Minerals from Primary and Secondary Resources

Innovative technology is needed to mine critical minerals to meet unprecedented demand. This session invites to present research in characterization, extraction, separation, in-situ recovery, and related areas that accelerate the recovery of critical minerals from traditional, secondary and unconventional resources.

Sunday, 19 October 2025
1:30 PM - 5:30 PM
HBGCC, 216AB

Mixotrophic Biofilms for Reclamation of Critical Minerals from Wastes

Paper number: 46-13
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 4:25 PM – 4:40 PM

Authors

Abstract

Mixotrophic biofilm technologies are actively being commercialized for agricultural and municipal water treatment, and recent research suggests that economical recovery of critical minerals (CM) can be similarly achieved from wastewaters to overcome supply chain limitations in the US.  The approach is particularly suitable for concentrating dilute (~ppb to 10’s of ppm) CM from suitable extraction and process waters based on observations of biological accumulation factors that exceed 104 for multivalent metal analytes.  Our technical approach utilizes analysis of natural environmental consortia, culturomic screening of filamentous algae libraries for tolerance to distinct wastewater types, and bioaugmentation of microbial isolates to improve biofilm stability and functional analyte uptake. We apply 16S and 18S amplicon sequencing and PCR probes for genes of interest with characterization of water treatment impacts in field-deployed and lab-based environmentally-simulated biofilm systems.  Taxonomic analyses obtained from long-term trials indicate culture stratification and association of specific taxa with performance-associated phenotypes, including biomass productivity and sloughing. We have shown that bioaugmentation via purposeful introduction of dilute quantities of organic substrates and seeding of select strains can be used to accelerate attachment and biomass production with continuous and sustained major nutrient and metals uptake in a field-deployable technology format.  Thus we demonstrate that it is possible to harness synergistic microbial services for adapting and stabilizing biofilms for high efficiency capture of dilute CM from diverse waste streams.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 57, No. 6

doi: 10.1130/abs/2025AM-414413

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