Lead blast-furnace slag secondary resource
Partly vitrified residue generated during lead blast-furnace smelting. The curated example is granulated slag from the former lead-zinc smelter at Noyelles-Godault, northern France, containing a silicate glass matrix, crystalline phases and metallic lead droplets. It is a process-defined secondary resource, distinct from elemental lead or zinc, a pure mineral, copper-smelter slag, steelmaking slag, furnace dust or zinc-leach residue. Its composition is sample-specific. No criticality designation is inherited from constituent elements.
Microbial & Biochemical Mechanisms (1)
Heterotrophic microbial alteration of lead blast-furnace slag
bioleaching
Microbial
Associated Organisms:
Pseudomonas aeruginosa (NCBITaxon:287)
Living Pseudomonas aeruginosa cultures altered a real lead-smelting residue in laboratory reactors with weekly medium renewal. Compared with sterile growth medium, the inoculated treatment increased cumulative elemental release into the operational digested-liquid fraction. Filtered and digested fractions differed, consistent with particulate association as well as dissolved mobilization. These measurements do not uniquely quantify cell-surface sorption, isolate a metal product, or establish a commercial recovery process.
Experimental Context & Analytical Limits:
Chapter 8 Section 8.2 describes duplicate experiments with 2.5 g of slag grains, reported as 2 mm diameter, in 75 mL of medium in 150 mL polycarbonate flasks at 23 +/- 2 degrees C and 100 rpm for 140 days. The three arms were ultrapure water, sterile growth medium, and growth medium with P. aeruginosa. Fresh medium was supplied every seven days. Per litre the medium contained 4 g succinic acid, 1 g ammonium sulfate, 1 g disodium hydrogen phosphate and 6 g TRIS. Methods specify NaOH adjustment to pH 7.8; results instead describe initial medium pH 8.2, increasing to 8.5 in the biotic arm and remaining 8.2 in the sterile arm. These reported settings are retained separately. General thesis methods, Section 4.1.2, identify the research strain as CIP 105094 from Institut Pasteur; Chapter 8 itself names the species without repeating its accession. An inoculum dose and a Chapter-8-specific slag sterilization protocol were not specified in the inspected methods. The digested sample used hydrogen peroxide and heating; the filtered sample excluded suspended cells and neoformed precipitates. The PDF prints the filter pore-size unit as micrograms, which is dimensionally invalid; a corrected pore diameter is not inferred. Separate polished-section observations at 60 and 150 days are not the same endpoint as the 140-day liquid series or the 128-day cumulative table. Industrial feedstock origin does not establish industrial operation of this laboratory weathering experiment.
Chapter 8 Section 8.2 describes duplicate experiments with 2.5 g of slag grains, reported as 2 mm diameter, in 75 mL of medium in 150 mL polycarbonate flasks at 23 +/- 2 degrees C and 100 rpm for 140 days. The three arms were ultrapure water, sterile growth medium, and growth medium with P. aeruginosa. Fresh medium was supplied every seven days. Per litre the medium contained 4 g succinic acid, 1 g ammonium sulfate, 1 g disodium hydrogen phosphate and 6 g TRIS. Methods specify NaOH adjustment to pH 7.8; results instead describe initial medium pH 8.2, increasing to 8.5 in the biotic arm and remaining 8.2 in the sterile arm. These reported settings are retained separately. General thesis methods, Section 4.1.2, identify the research strain as CIP 105094 from Institut Pasteur; Chapter 8 itself names the species without repeating its accession. An inoculum dose and a Chapter-8-specific slag sterilization protocol were not specified in the inspected methods. The digested sample used hydrogen peroxide and heating; the filtered sample excluded suspended cells and neoformed precipitates. The PDF prints the filter pore-size unit as micrograms, which is dimensionally invalid; a corrected pore diameter is not inferred. Separate polished-section observations at 60 and 150 days are not the same endpoint as the 140-day liquid series or the 128-day cumulative table. Industrial feedstock origin does not establish industrial operation of this laboratory weathering experiment.
Curated Evidence Points:
Support
Source:
yin2014_thesis
Sections 8.2.1-8.2.3 establish feed origin, medium, duplicate control arms and ICP-AES measurement. Figures 8.1 and 8.7 and Table 8.3 support greater cumulative release in digested biotic liquid than in sterile medium under the reported conditions. This is a treatment-level comparison, not a demonstrated molecular mechanism. Figure 8.6 shows bacterial colonization of the slag surface; the neighboring abiotic images also show glass and lead-droplet alteration.
Partial
Source:
yin2014_thesis
Table 8.3 reports 128-day cumulative Zn release of 260.4 micrograms per gram of slag in digested biotic liquid and 257.0 micrograms per gram in ultrapure water, versus 42.6 in sterile medium. The water arm therefore precludes describing Zn release as universally or exclusively microbially driven. The filtered biotic Zn value is 136.8 micrograms per gram of slag; it represents a different sampled fraction, not a lower total extraction experiment. The source does not establish statistical superiority over water or a recovered-metal yield.
Partial
Source:
yin2014_thesis
Sections 8.3.1 and 8.4.1 and Figure 8.7 attribute differences between digested and filtered liquid to metal association with cells or biofilm. Filtration also removes neoformed precipitates, so that difference alone cannot distinguish biosorption, intracellular accumulation and noncellular particulate metal. The narrative's 28% dissolved and 72% associated Fe are not arithmetically consistent with Table 8.3 values 91.1 and 270.1 micrograms per gram. No corrected fraction or exclusive biosorption yield is adopted.
Context_only
Source:
yin2014_thesis
Section 8.4.3 and schematic Figure 8.9 propose siderophore complexation and cell-surface binding to explain enhanced mobilization. They do not directly identify or quantify those ligands in this experiment. Table 8.4 extrapolates complete leaching times while neglecting protective secondary layers; these are model extrapolations, not observed field lifetimes or industrial treatment times. Neither criticality nor a separated product recovery is established.
Sources & References
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yin2014_thesis: Yin NH (2014). Weathering of metallurgical slags: a comprehensive study on the importance of chemical and biological contributions. Doctoral thesis, Universite Paris-Est; defended 2 December 2014, NNT 2014PEST1125. HAL tel-01154324v1. Complete 200-page deposited PDF inspected for Section 4.1.2 (printed p.84; PDF p.85) and Chapter 8 (printed pp.171-186; PDF pp.172-187), including relevant original tables and figures. Chapter 8 identifies its associated journal article DOI 10.1016/j.jenvman.2014.09.018. The thesis is the full-text version inspected here; it is not an independent replication of that article.
https://theses.hal.science/tel-01154324v1 (accessed 2026-10-16) -
vanhullebusch2015: van Hullebusch ED, Yin NH, Seignez N, Labanowski J, Gauthier A, Lens PNL, Avril C and Sivry Y (2015). Bio-alteration of metallurgical wastes by Pseudomonas aeruginosa in a semi flow-through reactor. Journal of Environmental Management 147:297-305. DOI 10.1016/j.jenvman.2014.09.018; PMID 25277127. Publisher abstract and bibliographic metadata checked; full publisher article not acquired. Experimental details below are grounded to the deposited thesis chapter, without assuming version-identical prose.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2014.09.018 (accessed 2026-10-16) -
ncbi_taxonomy: NCBI Taxonomy, taxon 287, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, rank species. The identifier denotes the species, not the experimental strain.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Taxonomy/Browser/wwwtax.cgi?id=287&mode=Info (accessed 2026-10-16) -
pasteur_cip: Institut Pasteur CRBIP collection catalogue, CIP 105094, Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Collection identity checked; catalogue cultivation conditions are not substituted for the experiment's reported conditions.
https://catalogue-crbip.pasteur.fr/fiche_catalogue.xhtml?crbip=CIP+105094 (accessed 2026-10-16)
Curation History
| Timestamp | Curator | Action | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|
2026-10-16T03:44:16.492080Z |
codex (GPT-6; codex) | CREATE | Added process-defined lead slag and controlled laboratory bioalteration evidence; preserved fraction and source inconsistencies without claiming product recovery. |
Record source: data/records/lead-blast-furnace-slag.yaml