Leaching

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