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。从本质上讲，这项活动涉及大规模行动，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大挑战是矿场的水管理和环境保护。水用于采矿和选矿，受地雷影响的水是通过矿井和废物储存设施流动的降水和地下水产生的。这项提案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，硒是一种越来越令人担忧的金属，因为它在高浓度时对野生动物有害。矿场产生的大量水使治理的前景变得令人望而生畏。正在开发的一种能够处理大流量污水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从水中去除金属、硫酸盐、硝酸盐和其他与矿山有关的化学品。要让这些处理系统以可靠的方式运行并不是一帆风顺的，需要对它们进行定期监测，以确保达到水质标准。在这个项目中，将使用基因组学工具、实验室台式生物反应器和增菌培养来表征矿场实际运行的去除硒和硫酸盐的生化反应器中的微生物群落。矿用生物反应堆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中推断出来。实验室实验将被用来优化生物反应器的性能，并将其与现有的微生物群落相关联。由于许多微生物都是新奇的，而且它们在处理过程中的作用尚不清楚，因此需要用增菌培养来确定在矿山被动处理系统中发现的微生物的特征。这项工作促进了基因组工具在监测和改进采矿工业中使用的生物反应器方面的使用。

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.