Biohydrometallurgy

Biohydrometallurgy is a subfield within hydrometallurgy which includes aspects of biotechnology.

Biohydrometallurgy is used to perform processes involving metals, for example, microbial mining, oil recovery, bioleaching, water-treatment and others. Biohydrometallurgy is mainly used to recover certain metals from sulfide ores. It is usually utilized when conventional mining procedures are too expensive or ineffective in recovering a metal such as copper, gold, lead, nickel and zinc.

...
Wikipedia