Journal
MINERALS ENGINEERING
Volume 75, Issue -, Pages 85-93Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.mineng.2014.12.003
Keywords
Bioremediation; Acid mine drainage; Sulphate-reducing bacteria; ZnS nanoparticles; ZnS/TiO2 nanocomposites
Funding
- Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (FCT) [PTDC/AAG-TEC/2721/2012]
- Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia [PTDC/AAG-TEC/2721/2012] Funding Source: FCT
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Acid mine drainage (AMD) generation is a widespread environmental problem in Europe, including Portugal. Previous experience has shown that a combined process consisting of an anaerobic sulphate-reducing bioreactor, following neutralization with calcite tailing, produces water complying with legal irrigation requirements from synthetic AMD. Aiming the treatment of real AMD a new bioreactor was inoculated with a SRB enrichment obtained from sludge from a local WWTP anaerobic lagoon. In the initial batch phase, sulphate supplementation was needed to achieve high sulphate-reducing bacteria counts before continuous feeding of AMD was started. The system quickly achieved good performance, proving it is easy to start-up. However, this time the neutralization step failed to keep bioreactor affluent pH higher than 5 for longer than three weeks. This was due to armouring of calcite by precipitates of various metals present in AMD. A new configuration, replacing a packed-bed column by a shallow contact basin, proved to be more robust, avoiding clogging, short-circuiting and providing long-term neutralization. The treated effluent, with excess of biologically generated sulphide, was successfully used to synthesize zinc sulphide nanoparticles, both in pure form and as a ZnS/TiO2 nanocomposite, thus proving the feasibility of coupling an AMD bioremediation system with the synthesis of metal sulphide nanoparticles and nanocomposites. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available