The respected Comrade
"Environmental protection work should be improved so as to protect and increase the country's resources and keep its air, rivers and seas completely free from pollution."
Bioleaching was developed as an alternative mining technology for minimizing waste production, environmental impact, and chemical consumption. It has been widely used and studied all over the world. With the production of a large amount of bio-leachate containing heavy metals in the process of bioleaching, it pollutes the rivers and soil. In the world today, a lot of efforts have been taken to remediate the polluted soil, to stop the pollution from wastewater, and to use wastewater as an alternative resource.
Most gold ores are pyrites and acidic wastewater with a lot of iron is produced as a result of bioleaching gold ores. Researches have been conducted to prevent the pollution of AMD (Acid Mine Drainage): neutralization of AMD adding alkaline materials such as CaCO3; passive treatment systems using the chemical; biological and physical removal processes that occur naturally in the environment; using sulfur-reducing bacteria which can eliminate toxic metals, acidity and recover valuable metals. However, little do people know about using AMD as an alternative resource.
Pyrite Bio-Leachate (PBL), mine wastewater, contains a large amount of iron. Iron has toxicity on microorganisms at certain concentration. Therefore, we developed the way to sterilize rice seeds with PBL. Soaking rice seeds in PBL and drying them could not sterilize rice seeds completely. When we soaked rice seeds in PBL and wet-dried them, rice seeds were completely sterilized and enhanced the germination regardless their soaking time. Similar results were obtained in seedbed experiments.
This research work found that PBL treatment can sterilize rice seeds and promote the germination, which is of great significance in protecting the environment and natural resources.
Our research results were published under the title "Pyrite bio-leachate, mine wastewater can sterilize the rice(Oryza sativa L.) seeds and promote the germination"(https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-21614-y) in Journal "Environmental Science and Pollution Research".
