Journal
MINERALS ENGINEERING
Volume 152, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.mineng.2020.106337
Keywords
Electrocoagulation; High density sludge; Mine drainage; Salinity; Sulfates
Funding
- FRQNT (Quebec's Research Funds Nature and Technology)
- NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada)
- Canada Research Chairs Program
- RIME (Research Institute on Mines and Environment) -UQAT (University of Quebec in AbitibiTemiscamingue)-Polytechnique Montreal
- Agnico Eagle
- Newmont-Goldcorp
- Iamgold
- Canadian Malartic Mine
- Raglan MineGlencore
- Rio Tinto
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Conventional chemical precipitation methods of salinity removal from mine drainage (MD) are ineffective to deal with sulfate concentrations lower than the solubility of gypsum (CaSO4 center dot 2H(2)O). As the standards of sulfate concentrations become more stringent, this limitation of conventional methods of precipitation drives the need for complementary or alternative solutions. In this context, this study evaluates the efficiency of electrocoagulation (EC) as a stand-alone treatment or as a polishing step following chemical precipitation. The best performance in batch of synthetic MD was obtained at the lowest current density tested of 20 mA/cm(2) and at the lowest initial sulfate concentration of 1.3 +/- 0.1 g/L. The role of pH was also deemed essential, with acidic pH favouring the coagulation process. Despite EC proving rather inefficient at removing sulfates on its own (in the range of 6 to 31% in 30 min) relative to hydrated lime (Ca(OH)(2), 17% removal) and mostly high density sludge (HDS, 45% removal), the combination of EC with the above-mentioned chemical precipitation methods allowed substantial improvement in sulfate removal (up to 35% with Ca(OH)(2) and 52% with HDS) much faster (in 30 min instead of 120 min).
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