Acid mine drainage (AMD), mine tailings and waste rocks are three of the biggest environmental challenges of the 21st century and strategies for their sustainable management remain elusive. The number of closed and abandoned mines around the world is staggering. In a recent review of Park et al (2019), for example, it was noted that there are over 550 000, 52 000, 10 000, 5400 and 5300 closed and abandoned mines in the US, Australia, Canada, Japan and China, respectively, and many of these mines have been releasing AMD into the environment. Acid mine drainage, sometimes referred to as acid rock drainage, is the very acidic leachate or effluent containing high concentrations of dissolved heavy metals (eg lead (Pb), copper (Cu), zinc (Zn) and iron (Fe)) and toxic metalloids (arsenic (As) and selenium (Se)) that is generated in mine sites primarily due to the exposure of sulphide minerals like pyrite to oxidising conditions (Tabelin et al, 2018; Tomiyama et al, 2019). In a closed copper, iron, and pyrite mine located in the mountains of northern Honshu, Japan, for example, the sealed underground mine workings and tailings dams have been releasing AMD with a pH of 2.1 and high concentrations of dissolved metals (700 mg/L of Fe, 2800 mg/L of SO42, 13 mg/L of Cu, 15 mg/L of Zn and 800 g/L of As) at an average flow rate of about 60 m3/h, which is being continuously treated since mine closure (Herrera et al, 2007a).
CITATION: Tabelin, C B, Igarashi, T, Uchiyama, H, Herrera, P, Opiso, E M, Aseniero, J P J and Maestre, C, 2019. Towards sustainable mine waste management: finding value in mine wastes via the ferrite process and geopolymerisation, in Proceedings Future Mining 2019, pp 169171 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).