Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Assessing The Evolution Of Mine Water Quality With Empirical 'First-Flush' Models, Patrick J. Merritt

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Coal mining activities can leave an extensive network of abandoned underground workings that gradually flood after operations cease. This rising mine water, with low pH and high sulfate, acidity, and metals can lead to uncontrolled releases of harmful acid mine drainage to the environment. Treatment plants are used to extract and treat the mine water to maintain its elevations below suspected discharge zones. Accurate predictions of long-term water quality is highly challenging due to the complexity and volume of the underground workings. As numerical models have difficulty recreating complex mine pool geometry and hydrogeochemical processes, empirical models that are based …