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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