D.U.Quark
Abstract
Acid Mine Drainage is water that has a low pH and filled with heavy metals. Acid Mine Drainage (AMD) is created by groundwater that travels through mines and then rejoins the watershed, polluting it. AMD is an urgent environmental issue in mining regions as it makes the affected water uninhabitable, devastating the ecosystem. Current cleanup systems use inexpensive limestone beds to remove the metals and neutralize the pH. New research is developing to create more efficient treatment systems using new resources such as further developed passive systems and the incorporation of living organisms like algae or microbes and food waste. Further development of these new techniques on a larger scale is the next step to solving this environmental issue.
School
Bayer School of Natural and Environmental Sciences
Department
Environmental Science and Management (ESM)
First Page
28
Last Page
34
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Bachtlin, A. (2019). Acid Mine Drainage and the Techniques to Cleanup this Issue. D.U.Quark, 3 (2). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/duquark/vol3/iss2/4