Estudio de factibilidad del diseño de un sistema biológico-físico-químico (BFQ) para el tratamiento de drenajes ácidos de mina a escala laboratorio.
Year: 2012
Type: dissertation
Abstract: The mining activity worldwide has grown during the last years due to the economic benefits that arise because of the great dependence of metals for technology development. Nevertheless, this activity has huge environmental impacts such as damage of the ecosystem and water pollution due to untreated acid mine drainages discharges. Acid mine drainages (AMD) are generated as a result of the oxidation of sulphur minerals, these liquid discharges contain high concentrations of heavy metals and sulfates and very low pH values. The aim of this study was to demonstrate the feasibility of a biological-physical-chemical (BPQ) system at laboratory scale for the treatment of AMD. The system consists of a biological reactor packed with a microbial consortium rich in sulfate-reducing bacteria (SBR) for the production of biogenic sulphur connected in series to a physical-chemical reactor for the precipitation of heavy metals, Cu (II) and Zn (II), as metallic sulphur. The bioreactor was fed in an ascending flow mode with 2500 mg COD-acetate L-1 as the electron donor and sulfate with concentrations of 4000, 3000 and 2000 mg L-1 as electron acceptor. The physical-chemical reactor was fed with the effluent from the bioreactor and the synthetic AMD with concentrations of Cu (II) of 30 (Phase I), 60 (Phase II) and 100 mg L-1 (Phase III) and Zn (II) with a concentration of 30 mg L-1 (Phase IV). The biological-physical-chemical (BPQ) system demonstrated to be highly efficient for the removal of heavy metals, with removals of Cu (II) and Zn (II) higher than 97% and an increase in the pH value of the synthetic acid mine drainage to 8.5. The favorable conditions for the good functioning of the biological system were found to be the following: an anoxic system, suitable pH, temperature around 30°C and concentrations of sulphate and acetate (DQO-sulfate relations lower than 1).
Authors: Flor Cevallos, Daniela Estefanía
Language: Spanish
Subfield: Environmental Chemistry
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2278894037