Nickel "Mining" Planet Found in the Phillipines

Scientists from the University of the Philippines, Los Baños have discovered a new plant species with an unusual lifestyle — it eats nickel for a living — accumulating up to 18,000 ppm of the metal in its leaves without itself being poisoned, says Professor Edwino Fernando, lead author of the report. Such an amount is a hundred to a thousand times higher than in most other plants. The study was published in the open access journal PhytoKeys.

The new species is called Rinorea niccolifera, reflecting its ability to absorb nickel in very high amounts. Nickel hyperaccumulation is such a rare phenomenon with only about 0.5–1% of plant species native to nickel-rich soils having been recorded to exhibit the ability. Throughout the world, only about 450 species are known with this unusual trait, which is still a small proportion of the estimated 300,000 species of vascular plants.

The new species, according to Dr Marilyn Quimado, one of the lead scientists of the research team, was discovered on the western part of Luzon Island in the Philippines, an area known for soils rich in heavy metals.

link.

Bioleeching: Phytomining's Microscopic Cousin

Bacteria can leach small amounts valuable metals from otherwise useless ore, researchers have found.

These mineral-crunching microorganisms are a type of bacteria that use minerals as their source of energy. When the life-forms break down the matter through metabolism, they squeeze out metal ores or concentrates combined with sulfur in a process called bioleaching.

The method is emerging as an increasingly important way to extract valuable minerals when conventional methods such as smelting can't do the job cheaply enough, experts say.

Development is also being spurred by the electronics industry's brisk global demand for copper.

"Certain microbes react to metal ions and help copper be leached out of low-quality ore," said Masaru Tomita of the Institute for Advanced Biosciences at Japan's Keio University.

"The ultimate goal is to establish biotechnologies to leach copper from this low-quality ore."

Bioleaching already currently accounts for an estimated 20 percent of the world's mined copper, and is in use at about 20 mines around the world.

That's further along than I would have thought. Pretty kewl too.

Phytomining Patent Filed

Y'know, I suspect that there's some prior art here for this. They've been working on this stuff for, well, over a decade. 2004 is when the patent was granted. IIRC, the book I have at home about the topic predates this. I wonder how one handles stuff like this.

Phytomining: a bit dated though

A small plant, alyssum, could turn farmers into miners through its ability to absorb metals such as nickel and cobalt into its leaves and stems. Perhaps this sounds strange, but research led by Dr. Bruce Conard, Vice-President, Environmental and Health Sciences, suggested that it could be an economic proposition. "Based on research to date, it is not that wild an idea, and Inco is one of the leaders in this area of technology." says Bruce.

[...]

Currently our plans call for testing the growing process in Indonesia and experimenting with different varieties of alyssum. Farmers in Indonesia may be able to plant and harvest alyssum on land naturally rich in nickel. As the soil is many metres deep, "nickel farming" could continue for centuries.

I wonder if it worked out. That website was from 2002...