Airborne Magnetometry to Identify Metallic Debris to Support Dredging and Search Activities at the Brumadinho Disaster Site – A Case Study

This paper describes the procedures and results of an airborne magnetic survey using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) conducted to support Search and Rescue (S&R) teams after the failure of a mining tailing dam at the Corrego do Feijão Mine, in the state of Minas Gerais, Southeast Brazil. The accident claimed 270 lives, practically destroying all the mine’s infrastructure. After the accident, the use of a fast, efficient, and cost-effective method to locate preferential sites for the rescue team to work was critical. Due to the difficulty of direct access to the impacted area, and since most of the affected infrastructure consisted of metallic materials, an airborne magnetometer was the logical choice. First, some performance tests were conducted in order to define the survey configurations, such as flight altitude, transect spacing and anomaly’s detectability threshold. After that, task priorities were set, and the survey area divided in small blocks according to their morphological characteristics using aerial photos of the impacted area. The results showed that the system was able to detect all relevant anomalies. The correlation of the anomalies with aerial photogrammetry helped to discard false anomalies, making the whole operation much more efficient. This increased the effectiveness of the S&R teams as well as the planning of the dredging operations by defining the preferential locations for the interventions.

Environmental Protection with HDPE Geomembranes in Mining Facility Constructions

The present work evaluated two high-density polyethylene (HDPE) geomembranes exhumed from mining facility constructions in Brazil. The MIN sample was exhumed from a pond for water use for the iron ore process after 7.92 years of exposure. The MIN2 sample was exhumed from a spillway channel of a ferronickel tailing dam after 10.08 years of service. The physical evaluations showed high depletion for antioxidants that work in the temperature range of 200 °C. The samples presented brittle tensile behavior and had similar behaviors between stress cracking and tensile. Low tensile elongation values and low-stress crack resistance were noted. The MIN2 sample presented a higher melt flow index (MFI) value and lower stress crack resistance. Thermogravimetric curves (TG) under synthetic air purge gas evaluation showed that both samples presented a similar behavior during the evaluation but had several mass losses. The results showed that exothermic and endothermic events occurred with loss of mass and showed no combustion events in the differential thermal analysis (DTA) curve evaluation. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) analysis showed no changes in the samples’ behavior. Thus, the results of tensile, stress cracking, and viscosity properties can demonstrate that changes in polymer structure occurred after field exposures.

Novel Materials for Myco-Decontamination of Cyanide-Containing Wastewaters through Microbial Biotechnology

This study examined the effectiveness of decontamination of industrial cyanide-containing water using mycelium-based lignocellulosic materials. These results suggest that fungi biomass and plant substrates can be used successfully in the treatment of wastewater contaminated by cyanide. Fungi were isolated from old wood samples taken from a tailing dam with high cyanide content (more than 20 years in semi-submerged condition). All isolated fungi belonged to the genus Fusarium. Fusarium oxysporum Schltdl. is most effective for biodegradation of cyanide-containing wastewaters (even at low temperatures). The most optimal lignocellulosic composition for production of mycelium-based biomaterial for biodegradation of cyanide wastewater consists of a uniform ratio of Siberian pine sawdust and wheat straw. The high efficiency of mycelium-based materials has been experimentally proven in vitro at 15-25 ° C. New fungal biomaterials are provide decrease in the concentration of cyanide ions to 79% (P <0.001). Large-scale cultivation of fungi biomass was carried out by the periodic liquid-phase cultivation. The submerged biomass from bioreactor was used as an inoculum for the production of mycelium-based materials for bioremediation of cyanide wastewater in situ (gold mine tailing).

Temporal and spatial variation of hydrochemical contamination in a former radium-uranium tailing dam as a result of environmental remediation field works

The main objective of this work was to understand the evolution of water quality within a tailings dam of a former radium-uranium mining site as a response to environmental remediation works. For this, results of numerical groundwater modeling were combined with multivariate hydrochemical trend analysis derived multivariate Principal Component Analysis and K-means clustering analysis. Numerical groundwater models were developed with the aim of detecting the main flow paths inside the tailings dam and across its bordering. These models allowed the identification of the hydrodynamic flows in the area that are most likely to be directly responsible for relevant hydrochemical exchanges in time. The spatial evolution of the contamination plume in time was mapped considering a cumulative interpretation that integrates all the hydrochemical indicators simultaneously through multivariate and clustering analysis. Resulting hydrochemical maps were superposed with the flow paths identified from modelling allowing to conclude that the contamination plume migrates within the tailings in the dependence of the main water flow paths that percolates within the tailings dam due to the existence of old shafts and old pre-existing streamlines located underneath the tailings dam. The methodology adopted allowed the verification of a general improvement in groundwater quality with a spatial reduction of the contamination plume within the tailings dam.

Study on the Rhizosphere Soil Microbial Community Structure Associated with Five Land Use Types in Jinchuan Mining Area

Five different land use types (desert, farmland, mining park, slag heap and tailing dam) were selected as variables around the Jinchuan Cu-Ni mining area in Jinchang, Gansu Province in the present study. The Atriplex canescens (Pursh) Nutt.’s rhizosphere bacterial abundance, diversity and community composition were examined taking advantage of High-throughput sequencing technology to discuss the effect of soil physicochemical properties on soil microbial community structure. The result indicated that the phylum Proteobacteria and Firmicutes was the most dominant taxon in desert, farmland and mining park, with a high abundance more than 30%. The phylum Proteobacteria was the most dominant taxon in slag heap and tailing dam, with a high abundance more than 40%. The tailing dam had the highest bacterial Chao indexes and the farmland had the highest bacterial Observed species indexes, Shannon indexes and Simpson indexes. Observed species indexes and Shannon indexes between the five sites were significantly different. The redundancy analysis and principal component analysis showed that the main environmental factors caused the different of rhizosphere bacterial community structure in five land use types were Mg, Ca, Cu, TN and moisture, followed by Ni, Cr, K, Pb, Zn content and pH. Hence, the result indicates that land use and soil environmental factors had significant impact on the diversity of soil microbial community structure.