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

矿业是加拿大不列颠哥伦比亚省的重要产业。就其性质而言，这一活动涉及大规模经营，以获得维持加拿大经济所需的有价值的产品。采矿可持续性面临的一个主要挑战是矿区的水管理和环境保护。水用于采矿和矿物加工，受矿山影响的水来自降水和流经矿井和废物储存设施的地下水。该提案旨在防止矿场排放未经处理的水可能对环境造成潜在的破坏性影响。硒是一种非金属，在不列颠哥伦比亚省的一些矿山中越来越受到关注，因为高浓度的硒对野生动物有害。矿区产生的大量水使得处理的前景令人生畏。正在开发的一种能够处理大流量的解决方案是使用所谓的被动生化反应器，这种反应器依靠自然的地球化学和生物过程来去除水中的金属、硫酸盐、硝酸盐和其他与地雷有关的化学物质。使这些处理系统以可靠的方式工作并不简单，需要定期监测它们，以确保满足水质规格。在该项目中，基因组学工具，实验室台式生物反应器和富集培养物将用于表征实际运行的生物化学反应器中的微生物群落，以去除矿山现场的硒和硫酸盐。矿山生物反应器中发生的一些关键过程可以从那里发现的微生物的基因组学中推断出来。实验室实验将用于优化生物反应器性能，并将其与存在的微生物群落相关联。需要富集培养物来表征矿井被动处理系统中发现的微生物，因为许多微生物是新的，它们在处理过程中的作用是未知的。这项工作推进了基因组工具在监测和改进采矿业中使用的生物反应器方面的应用。

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.