Integration of field measurements and reactive transport modelling to evaluate contaminant transport at a sulfide mine tailings impoundment

Abstract

Over a decade of field observations including geochemical, mineralogical and hydrological information are available on the generation of acid mine drainage from the Pistol Dam region of the P-area of Inco's tailings impoundment in Copper Cliff, Ontario. This work focuses on the integration and quantitative assessment of this data set using reactive transport modeling. The results of the reactive transport simulations are in general agreement with the field observations; however, exact agreement between the field and simulated results was not the objective of this study, and was not attained. Many factors contribute to the discrepancies between the field observations and simulation results including geochemical and hydrogeological complexities and necessary model simplifications. For example, fluctuating water levels observed at the site were averaged and described using a steady state flow system. In addition, the lack of representative thermodynamic and rate expression data contributed to the discrepancies between observations and simulation results, thus further research into the applicability of laboratory-derived thermodynamic and rate expression data to field conditions could minimize these discrepancies. Despite the discrepancies between the field observations and simulated results, integrating field observations with numerical modelling of the P-area tailings impoundment allowed for a more complete understanding of what affects the complex geochemical reactions.