Accelerated Mineral Carbonation for Acid Mine Drainage Treatment, Mine Tailings Stabilization & Carbon Dioxide Sequestration
- Principal Investigator (PI): Lianyang Zhang, Professor of Civil and Architectural Engineering and Mechanics
- Research Assistant: Hamid Vashaghian
- Partners: ASARCO and Freeport
There are two key goals for this project: to better understand the use of accelerated mineral carbonation to treat acid mine drainage and stabilize mine tailings while sequestering carbon dioxide, and to generate preliminary data for preparing competitive proposals for ongoing research funding.
Progress to-date includes characterized mine tailings, prepared and characterized AMD (Acid Mine Drainage), the development of equipment for testing, and commencement of an experiment on MT carbonation. Future research includes monitoring progress of MT carbonation, collection and testing of samples, and ongoing analysis of data.