(PDF) Acid Mine Drainage from Gold Mining in South

Waste from gold mines is considered to constitute the largest single source of waste pollution in South Africa and contributes significantly to acid mine drainage, which remains one of the country ...

Golden river of toxic waste from South African mining …

A collapsed dam at a diamond mine in South Africa recently released a torrent of mining waste into the surrounding area. A new satellite image shows the trail of dried and potentially toxic mud ...

The impacts of gold mine tailings in Australia

One very public catastrophe occurred in 2000, when a gold mining tailings dam in Romania, then controlled by Australian company Esmeralda Exploration, collapsed during a period of heavy rainfall. Some 120 tonnes of cyanide …

Hustlers Reef Gold Mining Reserve

Take a short stroll through the Hustlers Reef Gold Mining Reserve and learn about the history of one of Bendigo's richest underground mines - and the site of the town's worst mining accident. ... The area at the bottom of the hill was a …

Waste Management in the Gold and Silver Industry

Figure 6.4 combines the data on waste rock and tailings shown in Figs. 6.1 and 6.3, respectively, and shows the amount of total waste generated for Barrick operations between 2013 and 2016.Table 6.4 shows total waste generated, gold production and total waste generated per unit gold production. Total waste generated per ounce of gold produced has …

Global advancements in the management and treatment of acid mine

In the Witwatersrand gold mining region of the country, the tailings dams contain very high levels of heavy metals and oxides, with very low pH (pH ranges from 2.4 to 5.8). These result in about 202 million liters per day in discharge volume of AMD, although this can serve as a supply of safe water if adequately treated (Abiye and Ali 2022 ).

Technical Report: Design and Evaluation of Tailings …

Mine tailings dams: Characteristics, failure, environmental …

We conclude with a discussion of currently-used remediation measures taken following dam failures, and recommendations for management of failures. This review will be …

Tailings dams: an explainer

It's not uncommon to find large amounts of cyanide, mercury and arsenic, thereby creating toxic sludge. What are tailings dams? Before tailings dams, all mining companies used to dump their waste into the nearest water source. ... Canadian mining company Imperial Metals' Mount Polley copper-gold mine dam collapsed releasing 25 million cubic ...

The Nature of Acid Mine Drainage in the Vaal River System

Waste from gold mines, according to her, constitutes the single biggest source of waste and pollution in South Africa, and AMD is responsible for the most costly environmental and socio-economic impacts. ... 'Seepage and percolations from sludge dams amount to 24 tonnes of uranium water entering that region's water basins and river systems ...

All that glitters... Acid mine drainage: The toxic legacy of gold

"They now have to carry the cost of 120 years of irresponsible mining; but the gold-mining industry is in decline and [these new mining companies] do not feel they can pay." Indeed, said Rand Uranium CEO John Munro in testimony before the National Assembly in June: "Burdening new companies with the sins of the past is simply unsustainable.

An overview of the application of electrocoagulation for mine

Physico-chemical characteristics of a gold mining tailings dam wastewater. Journal of Environmental Science and Engineering A, 2(8A), 469. Google Scholar Acheampong, M. A., & Ansa, E. D. O. (2017). Low-cost technologies for mining wastewater treatment. ... Optimization of response surface, modeling, and sludge study. Journal of Mining and ...

Numerical Simulation of Seepage and Stability of …

Tailings dams are built to safely store tailings and to protect the natural environment from damage. However, tailings dam accidents occur frequently, endangering the safety of life and property, and causing pollution …

Trace elements contamination of soils around …

Earlier reports of gold mine tailings dams in Ghana recorded higher levels of As in soils compared to this study (Mensah et al., 2020; Antwi-Agyei et al., 2009). The levels of As observed in soils ...

BUILDING BIG: The Dam Challenge

"If that dam collapses, four million tons of poisonous sludge will gush down the mountainside and destroy our village completely. The gold mine isn't even productive anymore. Please remove the ...

Potential utilization of artisanal gold-mine tailings as …

3.1 Chemical compositions of gold-mine tailings. The chemical compositions of mine tailings shown in Table 1 indicate that SiO 2 is the most abundant component of the samples, which varied from 52.2 to 77.3% by weight. Although all samples also contain Al 2 O 3, CaO and Fe 2 O 3, they are present in variable amounts (Table 1).The samples also contain …

Technical Report: Design and Evaluation of Tailings …

disposed of. In the gold industry, for example, only a few hundredths of an ounce of gold may be produced for every ton of dry tailings generated. Similarly, the copper industry and others typically mine relatively low-grade ores that contain less than a few percent of metal values; the residue becomes tailings. Thus,

Long-term Risk of Tailings Dam Failure

Long-term Risk of Tailings Dam Failure. Figure 1a and 1b. Two NASA photos taken one-week apart reveal the massive scope of tailings mud discharges into Hazeltine Creek, Polley Lake, and Quesnel Lake, following failure of the …

Synthesis and characterization of coal fly ash and palm …

Figure 1. (a) Recovery process of gold employed by the ASGM operators and the small scale gold mine in Rosario, Agusan del Sur (b, for the ball-mill and c for the CIP plant) and the collected (d) gold mine tailings, (e) sugar mill lime sludge, (f) coal fly ash and (g) palm oil fuel ash. E.M. Opiso et al. Heliyon 7 (2021) e06654 2

Causes and environmental impact of the gold-tailings dam …

Semantic Scholar extracted view of "Causes and environmental impact of the gold-tailings dam failure at Karamken, the Russian Far East" by V. Glotov et al. ... mine tailings arealocated 50 km north of the city of Miramichi, New Brunswick,Canada, tailings and lime treatment sludge were co ... of mine tailings have been deposited from placer gold ...

Research on the

mining industry, other factors such as dam stability, tailings pipeline routes, dust generation and surface run-off are further significant environmental factors that need to be considered. 1. To identify the nature and extent of contamination in unsaturated and saturated zones underneath reclaimed gold mine tailings dams. 2.

Mining Technology: Overview

'Sludge' (the residue of puddled washdirt) choked watercourses and covered auriferous ground and roads. ... or by constructing embankments or wing-dams. Others extracted gold from the higher terraces (the remnants of old streambeds) by directing water from a high elevation down the faces of excavation soil to separate the gold from the soil and ...

Mining wastewater treatment technologies and resource …

The mining industry contributes significantly to the world's economy. Mining resources are utilized for different purposes, including ornaments, jewellery, cable wires, building purposes, vehicles, electricity production, high-tech applications, etc. [1, 2].The process of mining and purification of mineral resources requires high volumes of water, which is released into the …

Acid Mine Drainage Treatment & Sludge Disposal

The assumptions (percent solids of AMD sludge, weight-percent of treated mine water resulting as sludge, and specific gravity of iron hydroxide) were taken from a study conducted by Green International, Inc. They found a "normal range of solids in mine drainage sludge of 1 to 6 pct, with 2.5 pct being a good average value."

Brazil's deadly dam disaster in Brumadinho was …

Members of a rescue team search for victims after a tailings dam owned by Brazilian mining company Vale SA collapsed in Brumadinho, Brazil, on January 28, 2019. Brazil's deadly dam disaster may ...

Synthesis and characterization of coal fly ash and palm oil …

Figure 1 (a) Recovery process of gold employed by the ASGM operators and the small scale gold mine in Rosario, Agusan del Sur (b, for the ball-mill and c for the CIP plant) and the collected (d) gold mine tailings, (e) sugar mill lime sludge, (f) …

5 things to know about Mount Polley mine disaster, 10 years …

On Aug. 4, 2014, a tailings dam breach at the Mount Polley mine in B.C.'s Interior flooded the local watershed with contaminated water and debris. The faulty dam released 25 billion litres of water mixed with mining waste — enough to fill about 10,000 Olympic swimming pools — into Polley Lake, Hazeltine Creek and Quesnel Lake.

Mine tailings dams: Characteristics, failure, environmental …

On 25th January 2019, the tailings dam of the Brumadinho iron mine operated by Vale S/A failed catastrophically. The death toll stood at 259 and 11 people remained missing as of January 2020. This tragedy occurred three years after Mariana's tailings dam rupture – the most significant tailing dam disaster in Brazilian history.

Mine tailings dam failures major cause of …

The Imperial Metals Mount Polley gold and copper mine tailings dam disaster in British Columbia, Canada, dumped 24 million cubic meters (more than 31 million cubic yards) of mine waste and sludge ...

The influence of a high-density sludge acid mine …

The Eastern Basin chemical acid mine drainage (AMD) treatment plant is one of the world's largest high-density sludge (HDS) plants, and came into operation in August 2016.