Acid drainage potential from coal mine wastes: environmental assessment through static and kinetic tests

The present study involved the assessment of potential generation of acid drainage from a coal mining area in India. Laboratory-based static and kinetic tests on overburden samples were conducted. Results of the static tests using acid base accounting indicate that all samples may be acid generators, and their generation capacity varied between likely, possible and low. To verify the acid generation potentiality of those samples showing a high acid drainage production in the static test, the kinetic test, using humidity cell, was conducted for a period of 15 weeks. The samples were leached with simulated rain water to mimic the chemical weathering under controlled laboratory conditions and imitate actual mine site leaching. Data obtained from chemical analysis of collected leachate were used to estimate production and reaction rates of acid generation and neutralizing capacity. Based on the kinetic test, it can be concluded that presently the neutralizing capacity of the samples is better than the oxidation capacity (acid generation). But due to the high weathering rate of carbonates, as reflected by the simulated leaching test, the neutralizing materials (carbonates) will eventually be exhausted earlier (since they showed dissolution rate) than the acid generation species (sulfates). Thus, acid drainage production is predicted from that point of time, when the neutralizing capacity has been exhausted for these mine sites.