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

Wikiwand in your browser!

Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.

Every time you click a link to Wikipedia, Wiktionary or Wikiquote in your browser's search results, it will show the modern Wikiwand interface.

Wikiwand extension is a five stars, simple, with minimum permission required to keep your browsing private, safe and transparent.