Carolina Vargas

Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile / Sustainable Mining Engineering

Advisor: Prof. Diego Torres

Carolina Vargas is engineering microbial consortia for the bioleaching of chalcopyrite-dominant copper ores from sub-economic tailings deposits in Chile's Atacama region — material that current flotation and smelting circuits cannot profitably process. At the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile's Mining Engineering department, supervised by Prof. Diego Torres, she has assembled and characterised four distinct Acidithiobacillus thiooxidans/ferrooxidans co-cultures under the extreme salinity conditions (up to 35 g/L Cl⁻) that dominate Atacama pore water, where most commercial bioleaching bacteria fail. Her most productive consortium, enriched by serial transfer on authentic Codelco tailing samples, achieves 68% copper extraction from 0.3% Cu ore in 90 days — versus 41% for the commercial inoculum used as benchmark. Carolina models solute transport and cell attachment kinetics in her column reactors using COMSOL Multiphysics, allowing her to predict scale-up behaviour at heap-leach geometry. Her dual CONICYT-Codelco fellowship and an industry advisor from Anglo American Chile who co-directs her experimental programme place her research in direct service of the Chilean copper industry's net-zero tailings management goals.