Eco-Sustainable Treatment for Mine Waters

Dear Colleagues,

Resolving the impacts of mining on water quality remains a challenge. Contamination of water can result from different interrelated factors, such as geological background, climate, geochemistry, biochemistry, commodity, mine type, and processing method. Many water treatment technologies have been developed. Active technologies such as membrane filtration, adsorption, ion exchange, and thermal distillation can remove a wide range of contaminants from mine water, but their energy demand, cost, and maintenance requirements have led to low uptake by the industry. Moreover, treatment technologies that require continuous use of chemicals and produce large amounts of sludge or brine can lead to poor sustainability outcomes. Passive technologies such as constructed wetlands, anoxic limestone drains, or permeable reactive barriers have emerged as alternative options. They tend to be more cost-effective, due to their lower energy demand and lower operational inputs, but implementation often requires access to large areas of land. Fluctuations in flow magnitude and contaminant concentrations may reduce treatment efficiency, reducing their long-term reliability.  Whilst there is broad consensus on the ability of technologies to remove contaminants and produce water of a required quality in controlled conditions where flows and contaminant concentrations are relatively stable, there remains challenges in adapting these technologies to mine site conditions, particularly variable flow rates.

This Special Issue seeks to gather the best available knowledge for the eco-sustainable treatment of mine water. We encourage submission of papers describing innovative approaches over the whole mine life cycle, from exploration to closure, and proposing paradigm shifts in the way we can simultaneously address the twin challenges of (1) decontaminating mine water at scale, so that it can be converted into a resource and made available as supply suitable for a range of societal uses, and (2) selectively extracting and recovering metals and other valuable materials through the treatment process in forms that can be used for the delivery of further value.

Dr. Claire Côte
Dr. Mansour Edraki
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Minerals is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• mine water contamination
• mine water treatment
• sustainable mine water management
• acid mine drainage
• metal removal
• bioremediation
• sludge minimization
• brine minimization
• recovery of critical elements

1. Title: Towards a circular economy in the mining industry: Possible solutions for water recovery through advanced mineral tailings dewatering

2. Title: Challenges and opportunities in mine water treatment and the potential of hybrid treatment processes at mine closure