Cross-current leaching of indium from end-of-life LCD panels.

Indium is a critical element mainly produced as a by-product of zinc mining, and it is largely used in the production process of liquid crystal display (LCD) panels. End-of-life LCDs represent a possible source of indium in the field of urban mining. In the present paper, we apply, for the first time, cross-current leaching to mobilize indium from end-of-life LCD panels. We carried out a series of treatments to leach indium. The best leaching conditions for indium were 2M sulfuric acid at 80°C for 10min, which allowed us to completely mobilize indium. Taking into account the low content of indium in end-of-life LCDs, of about 100ppm, a single step of leaching is not cost-effective. We tested 6 steps of cross-current leaching: in the first step indium leaching was complete, whereas in the second step it was in the range of 85-90%, and with 6 steps it was about 50-55%. Indium concentration in the leachate was about 35mg/L after the first step of leaching, almost 2-fold at the second step and about 3-fold at the fifth step. Then, we hypothesized to scale up the process of cross-current leaching up to 10 steps, followed by cementation with zinc to recover indium. In this simulation, the process of indium recovery was advantageous from an economic and environmental point of view. Indeed, cross-current leaching allowed to concentrate indium, save reagents, and reduce the emission of CO2 (with 10 steps we assessed that the emission of about 90kg CO2-Eq. could be avoided) thanks to the recovery of indium. This new strategy represents a useful approach for secondary production of indium from waste LCD panels.

Auto- and heterotrophic acidophilic bacteria enhance the bioremediation efficiency of sediments contaminated by heavy metals.

This study deals with bioremediation treatments of dredged sediments contaminated by heavy metals based on the bioaugmentation of different bacterial strains. The efficiency of the following bacterial consortia was compared: (i) acidophilic chemoautotrophic, Fe/S-oxidising bacteria, (ii) acidophilic heterotrophic bacteria able to reduce Fe/Mn fraction, co-respiring oxygen and ferric iron and (iii) the chemoautotrophic and heterotrophic bacteria reported above, pooled together, as it was hypothesised that the two strains could cooperate through a mutual substrate supply. The effect of the bioremediation treatment based on the bioaugmentation of Fe/S-oxidising strains alone was similar to the one based only on Fe-reducing bacteria, and resulted in heavy-metal extraction yields typically ranging from 40% to 50%. The efficiency of the process based only upon autotrophic bacteria was limited by sulphur availability. However, when the treatment was based on the addition of Fe-reducing bacteria and the Fe/S oxidizing bacteria together, their growth rates and efficiency in mobilising heavy metals increased significantly, reaching extraction yields >90% for Cu, Cd, Hg and Zn. The additional advantage of the new bioaugmentation approach proposed here is that it is independent from the availability of sulphur. These results open new perspectives for the bioremediation technology for the removal of heavy metals from highly contaminated sediments.