MANAGEMENT OF ACID MINE DRAINAGE IN COAL MINES - A CASE STUDY

摘要

In the past decade, much attention has been devoted to developing economical and field applicable technology for treating acid mine drainage. As a result of this, a number of technologies have been suggested but the major negative aspect of all such technologies is that a little emphasis has been given on geochemical behavior of coal and coal associated rocks (such as shale, clay, sandstone) with acid mine water. In this paper, an effort has been made to determine whether the coal-associated lithologies can be used to treat acid mine water or not in a particular mine. This question was addressed with the fabrication of physical drain model in the laboratory simulating actual field condition of a mne. Samples of coal associated rocks (i.e. sandstone) were collected from an opencast coal mine and petro-chemical properties were determined. After getting preliminary favorable petro-chemical results, slabs of sandstone were prepared and laid down throughout a. length of 18m in physical drain model. In this experiment, acid mine water of particular pH value was allowed to circulate in the drain at a constant rate of discharge. The water samples were collected at the discharge point of the drain and were analyzed for change in pH value. The experimental results obtained were quite encouraging and showed that coal associated rocks (i.e. sandstone) of the study area has the capacity to neutralize acid mine water and can be used for treatment of AMD at little cost.