Mixing of acid rock drainage with alkaline ash leachates : fate and immobilisation of trace elements

• Acid rock drainage (ARD) from mine waste dumps often contains ferrous iron, sulphate and high concentrations of trace elements detrimental to the environment. Future costs will be enormous if the problem is not treated today. Simple, low maintenance, cost-effective methods for remediation of historical mine sites are therefore desired. In this study several mine waters were mixed with an alkaline ash leachtes in order to study the fate of the trace elements from both the mine waters (Cd, Cu, Pb, Zn, Ni and Co) and the ash leachates (Cr and Mo). It was found that the addition of ash water will precipitate hydrous ferric oxides (HFO) and hydrous aluminium oxides (HAO) and thereby inducing trace element sorption and co precipitation. It is also clear that the composition of the formed HFO/HAO mix determines the efficiency of the sorption for different trace elements. It is apparent that the amount of precipitating iron will determine the effectiveness of the removal of the trace elements. Sorption occurred much earlier (often one pH unit or more) in the system with high iron concentrations compared to the systems with lower iron concentrations. Removal of cadmium and zinc is difficult below pH 8 if the amount of precipitates is low. Using ash for generation of alkaline water may be a problem with regards to chromium and molybdenum. It is, however, possible to avoid problems with molybdenum by keeping the final pH around 7 and chromium(VI) from the ash water will be reduced into chromium(III) and precipitated as the hydroxide in the presence of iron(II) from the mine waters.The results imply that it is possible to also use fly ashes in alkaline leach beds in order to neutralize ARD followed by precipitation and sorption of trace elements.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Geovetenskap och miljövetenskap -- Miljövetenskap (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Earth and Related Environmental Sciences -- Environmental Sciences (hsv//eng)

Keyword

HFO

HAO

chromium

molybdenum

PHREEQC

Environmental chemistry

Miljökemi

Miljökemi

Environmental Chemistry

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)