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Mineral Production Cycle - Part 2




Imagine yourself walking by the beach, glimmering white sand by the shore, cool salty whiff of air and pristine blue water. It’s always nice to regain your strength with the help of Vitamin Sea. Do not be afraid that mining might destroy that opportunity to experience your moment of relaxation, this article will help you understand means and ways to minimize or eradicate any contaminated wastewater.

Collecting and treating wastewater from metal processing can be an effective way to avoid direct disposal of toxic materials into the environment. Although active treatments that are based on human intervention, such as adding chemical to wastewater are most widely used today, passive treatments (relying on plant and bacteria ability to mitigate contaminants) have potential for greater use in treating wastewater. The principal waste-waters associated with mines and quarries are slurries of rock particles in water. These arise from rainfall washing exposed surfaces and haul roads and also from rock washing and grading processes.

The addition of neutralizing agents such as limestone or sodium hydroxide to acidic waste water is the most common active method of reducing acidity and heavy metal pollution before the water is released into the environment. Bioremediation shows promise in the search for effective passive treatments in metal mining. The technique is based on the use of bacteria to trap or absorb metals. The most common form of bioremediation is the creation of artificial wetlands, which have been used extensively in the coal industry, but not the same extent yet in metals mining.

Bioremediation is a waste management technique that involves the use of organisms to neutralize pollutants from a contaminated site. According to the United States EPA, bioremediation is a treatment that uses naturally occurring organisms to break down hazardous substances into less toxic or non-toxic substance. Some examples of bioremediation related technologies are phytoremediation, bioventing, bioleaching, landfarming, bioreactor, composting, bio augmentation, rhizofiltration and biostimulation.

Bioremediation may occur on its own (natural attenuation or intrinsic bioremediation) or may only effectively occur through the addition of fertilizers, oxygen, etc., that help in enhancing the growth of the pollution-eating microbes within the medium (biostimulation). The elimination of a wide range of pollutants and wastes from the environment requires increasing our understanding of the relative importance of different pathways and regulatory networks to carbon flux in particular environments and for particular compounds, and they will certainly accelerate the development of bioremediation technologies and biotransformation processes.

Trace metals and cyanide found in wastes should be removed before the waste is disposed of in a waste dump or tailing impoundment. Trace removal systems, cyanide destruction systems, precipitation of heavy metals using lime, the oxidation of cyanide, ion exchange, and filtration can be used to remove 90 percent or more of trace metals and cyanide from discharge waters. Such removal systems, can be costly for mining companies operating in areas where the volume of water to be treated is very high.

In the specific case of red mud created during bauxite refining, a technique of dry disposal can be utilized. In this method the mud is thickened by removing water and then dried. A synthetic liner is installed underneath the mud to protect water supplies, and the hardened mud is eventually re-vegetated.

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