Mine Water Treatment and the Use of Artificial Intelligence in Acid Mine Drainage Prediction

Acid Mine Drainage (AMD) emanating from coal, gold and copper mining has been widely reported with various negative environmental effects. Challenges associated with mine water can be experienced at a local and a regional scale. Such challenges include contamination of potable water and agricultural lands, and disrupted growth and reproduction of aquatic plants and animals. Therefore, it is critical to implement long term mine water management solutions including treatment of AMD. Treatment options can be broadly classified into passive and active treatment technologies. Both active and passive treatment technologies have their own advantages and disadvantages. Prediction of AMD quality bears important consequences for long term management of water resources and therefore it is critical to improve the predictive capability of mine water using reliable and modern techniques. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is currently seeing a major interest in all spheres of life and interest from society in general. In this chapter, the authors highlight certain important aspects regarding AMD: generation, remediation, quality prediction using conventional and AI techniques and their limitations. A case study using a hybrid AI system to predict mine water quality is presented and discussed.