Interaction between an acidic mine water and an agricultural soil material

Abstract

A column filtering experiment was conducted to investigate interaction between an acidic mine water and an agricultural soil material during percolation of the mine water through the soil column. The results show that the mine water-borne mineral acid, Cu, Pb, Zn and Cd was markedly held by the soil during the earlier stage of the experiment. Approximately 1/3 of the retained acid was only physically held by the soil while the remaining 2/3 of the retained acid was either physiochemically or chemically bound to soil colloids. There was a tendency that the retained acid decreased with increasing depth of the soil column. Except for Cd, the capacity of soil to remove these heavy metals from the mine water persisted longer, compared to mineral acid. In contrast with mineral acid, the concentration of retained heavy metals increased with increasing depth, suggesting that these metal ions are less competitive than major acidic cations such as Al3+, H+ and Fe3+ for available adsorption sites in the upper soil layers. Mine water-borne Cu, Cd and Pb were immobilized predominantly in exchangeable and oxide-bound forms while mine water-borne Zn was immobilized mainly in carbonate- and organic-bound forms. During mine water infiltration, some soil-borne metals were mobilized and leached out of the soil under acidic conditions during the latter stage of filtration operations. Unlike Cu, Pb, Zn and Cd, mine water-borne Fe was transformed into colloidal Fe oxides/hydroxides which were carried by the downflowing water. A large proportion of mine water-borne Mn was only physically held, probably not necessarily in soluble forms but in colloidal forms.