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Leaching

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Leaching is the loss or extraction of certain materials from a carrier into a liquid (usually, but not always a solvent), and may refer to:

  • Leaching (agriculture), the loss of water-soluble plant nutrients from the soil; or applying a small amount of excess irrigation to avoid soil salinity
  • Leaching (chemistry), the process of extracting substances from a solid by dissolving them in a liquid
  • Leaching (metallurgy), a widely used extractive metallurgy technique which converts metals into soluble salts in aqueous media
    • Dump leaching, an industrial process to extract metals from ore taken directly from the mine and stacked on the leach pad without crushing
    • Heap leaching, an industrial process to extract metals from ore which has been crushed into small chunks
    • Tank leaching, a hydro metallurgical method of extracting valuable material from ore
    • In-situ leaching, a process of recovering minerals such as copper and uranium through boreholes drilled into the deposit
  • Leaching (pedology), the loss of mineral and organic solutes due to percolation from soil
  • Bioleaching, the extraction of specific metals from their ores through the use of bacteria and fungi

See also

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