Determining and modeling the potential formation of acid mine drainage in a sulphide mine field

Acid Mine Drainage (AMD) is known as one of the most important environmental problems encountered at the present time. Until now, several static and kinetic tests methods have been proposed for estimation of AMD potential. Of these tests, kinetic column tests are commonly performed due to its better representative of natural conditions. However, there isn?t any suggested standard for the column dimensions and the amount of material used for kinetic column tests. Considering the importance of AMD event in our country in recent years and the limitations of the kinetic column test, performing this test on columns having different lengths and diameters and investigating the mechanism of the acid mine drainage formation is aimed in this study. For this purpose, platforms consisting of columns of different dimensions were designed and ore samples were collected from Murgul Damar open-pit mining to be used in the tests. X-ray diffraction analysis, ore microscopic studies, Mineral Liberation Analysis and X-ray fluorescence analysis were realized in order to determine the mineralogical, physical and/or chemical composition of these collected samples before and after kinetic column tests.The time depended variations of pH, Ec, and concentration of many elements and compounds measured from chemical analysis during kinetic column tests were examined. Statistically significant correlations were obtained between column dimensions and ?lag time? which described from pH measurements during these tests. Similarly, it is determined that statistically significant correlations exist among column dimensions and cumulative SO4 and the cumulative Ca+Mg+Mn concentrations. Significant relationships and some general correlations have been achieved from comprehensive statistical analysis of the variation of cumulative SO4, cumulative Ca+Mg+Mn and cumulative pH values with time. In addition, statistically significant relationships that can be used in applications are proposed based on multiple regressions in which cumulative Ca+Mg+Mn, SO4 and pH were taken as dependent and time was selected as independent variables.