Responses of bacterial community to potential heap construction methods of fine-grained copper tailings in column bioleaching system

Abstract The column bioleaching of copper flotation tailings was comparatively investigated using layered heap construction method (LM), agglomerate heap construction method (AM), and pellets-sintering heap construction method (PM). The bacterial communities of free, attached, weakly-attached, and strongly-attached microbes in the later bioleaching stage were investigated. In AM group, the addition of lump sulphide ore resulted in the low leachate pH, high ferric iron concentration, and rapid microbial adsorption, which obtained the maximum copper extraction (60.1%) compared with LM (54.6%) and PM (43.9%) groups. The relative abundance of dominant genera and microbial communities of different microbiota underwent changes in three heap construction methods. The alpha-diversity indexes of attached, weakly-attached, and strongly-attached microbes were different, while no significant change was observed in free bacteria. The variation of whole bacterial community was significantly associated with solution pH, total iron, and ferric iron concentrations. Pearson correlation analysis and partial least square path model both indicated that attached bacteria made larger contribution to the copper extraction of tailings.