Bioactivation and bioaugmentation of a passive reactor for acid mine drainage treatment

摘要

Interest in passive remediation technologies used for acid mine drainage (AMD) treatment has been increasing considerably in the last decade. Although passive systems involving sulfate reducing activity offer many advantages, treatment performance still needs to be improved. Therefore, the application of bioac-tivation and bioaugmentation techniques on these systems was investigated. Bioactivation of a granular peat moss (GPM) was performed in 0.75 1 laboratory batch reactors with a sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) consortium. Bioactivation increased the average sulfate reduction rate from 69 to 167 mg/l.d. Three 9 1 columns were filled with a mixture of organic substrates, inorganic materials and a culture medium. The first column was inoculated with the bioactivated consortium, the second with a non-bioactivated sediment and the third was a control. Synthetic AMD was fed in a continuous mode. Results obtained after 60 days show similar sulfate and metal removal in all reactors with slightly higher performance in the inoculated and bioactivated columns.