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

采矿业是加拿大不列颠哥伦比亚省的一项重要产业。从本质上讲，这种活动涉及大规模的操作，以获得维持加拿大经济所需的有价值的产品。采矿的可持续性面临的一项重大挑战是矿场的水管理和环境保护。水用于采矿和矿物加工，受地雷影响的水是由降水和流经矿井和废物储存设施的地下水产生的。这项建议涉及防止从矿场排放未经处理的水可能对环境造成的潜在破坏性影响。在不列颠哥伦比亚省的一些矿山中，硒是一种越来越受到关注的类金属，因为高浓度的硒对野生动物有害。矿区产生的大量水使处理的前景令人望而生畏。目前正在开发的一种解决方案是使用所谓的被动生化反应器，它依靠自然的地球化学和生物过程，从水中去除金属、硫酸盐、硝酸盐和其他与矿山有关的化学物质。使这些处理系统以可靠的方式工作并不简单，需要对它们进行定期监测，以确保水质达到标准。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将用于描述实际运行的生化反应器中去除矿区硒和硫酸盐的微生物群落。矿井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基因组学推断出来。实验室实验将用于优化生物反应器的性能，并将其与微生物群落相关联。富集培养物是表征矿山被动处理系统中发现的微生物所必需的，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。这项工作促进了基因组工具在监测和改进矿山工业中使用的生物反应器中的使用。

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.