Improvement of passive biochemical reactors for selenium and sulphate removal at mines sites

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Mining is an important industry in British Columbia, Canada. By nature this activity involves large-scale operations in order to obtain the valuable products that are needed to sustain the Canadian economy. A major challenge to the sustainability of mining is the management of water at mines sites and protection of the environment. Water is used for mining and mineral processing, and mine-affected water is generated from precipitation and groundwater flowing through mine workings and waste storage facilities. This proposal addresses prevention of potentially devastating impacts on the environment that could result from discharge of untreated water from mine sites. Selenium is a metalloid of growing concern at some mines in British Columbia since at high concentrations it is harmful to wildlife. The large quantities of water generated at mine sites makes the prospect of treatment daunting. One solution that is being developed to enable treatment of large flows is to use so-called passive biochemical reactors that rely on natural geochemical and biological processes to remove metals, sulphate, nitrate and other mine-related chemicals from the water. Making these treatment systems work in a reliable fashion is not straight forward and regular monitoring of them is needed to ensure water quality specifications are met. In this project, genomics tools, laboratory bench bioreactors and enrichment cultures will be used to characterize the microbial communities from actual operating biochemical reactors removing selenium and sulphate at mines sites. Some of the key processes taking place in mine bioreactors can be inferred from the genomics of the microbes found there. Laboratory experiments will be used to optimize bioreactor performance and to correlate this to microbial communities present. Enrichment cultures are needed to characterize microbes found in mine passive treatment systems since many are novel and their roles in the treatment process are unknown. This work advances the use of genomic tools in monitoring and improvement of bioreactors used in the mine industry.