Acid mine drainage (AMD) is one of most significant environmental challenges facing the mining industry worldwide. It occurs as a result of natural oxidation of sulphide minerals contained in mining wastes at operating and closed/decommissioned mine sites. AMD may adversely impact the surface water and groundwater quality and land use due to its typical low pH, high acidity and elevated concent...

Present address: S.C. Hsu, IT Corporation, 111 N. Canal St, Suite 941, Chicago IL 60606, USA Abstract Acid drainage containing high levels of iron, manganese, and sulfate is a pollution problem widely associated with abandoned coal mines. The remediation of these sites commonly falls to public agencies, so policy-makers need to allocate scarce resources over many sites and to find cost-effectiv...

This paper discusses the methodology used to determine the optimal ion-exchange column size to process all separate batches of feeds from acid mine drainage wastewater. The optimal design ensures the best utilization of resin material and therefore results in a minimum amount of spent resins. Ion exchanger materials have been studied for removing heavy metals from a metal bearing wastes. For th...

In this study meiobenthic communities were sampled from several acid mine drainage (AMD) impacted sites along the Tioga River in North Central Pennsylvania. Concentrations of several chemical indicators of aquatic health (Fe/Fe, Mn, and SO4) were measured along with the pH. Meiobenthic communities were present at all AMD impacted locations but diversity and abundance varied. The diversity and a...

Acidithiobacillus ferrivorans is an acidophile that often occurs in low temperature acid mine drainage, e.g., that located at high altitude. Being able to inhabit the extreme environment, the bacterium must possess strategies to copy with the survival stress. Nonetheless, information on the strategies is in demand. Here, genomic and transcriptomic assays were performed to illuminate the adaptat...