SEASONAL VARIABILITY OF DISCHARGES FROM WETLANDS CONSTRUCTED BELOW KYANITE MINE TAILINGS PONDS; GRAVES MOUNTAIN SITE, LINCOLNTON, GA

Preventing acid mine drainage from mine tailings

Mining activity always has high impact on its surroundings, being waste deposition the cause of multiple and complex problems to the environment. One of them is Acid Mine Drainage (AMD), causing acid water percolation through large areas in the mine site. Portugal was a prosper tungsten producer from the beginning of the XX century, having its apogee during World War II. Nowadays there are mill...

Accidental Water Pollution Risk Analysis of Mine Tailings Ponds in Guanting Reservoir Watershed, Zhangjiakou City, China

Over the past half century, a surprising number of major pollution incidents occurred due to tailings dam failures. Most previous studies of such incidents comprised forensic analyses of environmental impacts after a tailings dam failure, with few considering the combined pollution risk before incidents occur at a watershed-scale. We therefore propose Watershed-scale Tailings-pond Pollution Ris...

Biological manganese removal from acid mine drainage in constructed wetlands and prototype bioreactors.

Mine drainage waters vary considerably in the range and concentration of heavy metals they contain. Besides iron, manganese is frequently present at elevated concentrations in waters draining both coal and metal mines. Passive treatment systems (aerobic wetlands and compost bioreactors) are designed to remove iron by biologically induced oxidation/precipitation. Manganese, however, is problemat...

Enhancing phosphorus removal in constructed wetlands with ochre from mine drainage treatment.

No single end-use has yet been identified that is capable of consuming the projected production of ochre (mainly iron (III) oxides) from mine drainage treatment. However, the high sorption capacity of ochre for phosphorus (up to 26 mg kg(-1)) means that it could be used in constructed wetlands to enhance phosphorus removal. Laboratory batch experiments showed that coarse-grained ochre removes 9...

Constructed wetlands: borrowing a concept from nature.