What will be happened in industrial-scale bioleaching?

What shall be taken into account when starting big-scale bioleaching? Some ideas:

1. A successive set of bioleaching pilots (with increasing size).

2. Transport of gases (O2, CO2).

3. Nutrients (P, N etc.).

4. Temperature.

5. Risk of re-building metal sulfides.

6. Microbial reduction of sulfate (see point 5.)

7. Chemical inhibition of sulfide-oxidizing metabolism.

8. Efficiency of Fe3+ to dissolute nickel.

9. Continuous control of microbial activities.

These are the basic issues. There may be more of them.

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