Šottník P., Lalinská-Voleková B., Brčeková J., Koděra P. & Jurkovič Ľ., 2016: Characterization and environmental risk assessment of potential mining waste from Detva – Biely vrch deposit. Acta Geologica Slovaca, 8, 2, 217–227.

Characterization and environmental risk assessment of potential mining waste from Detva – Biely vrch deposit

Peter Šottník¹, Bronislava Lalinská-Voleková², Jana Brčeková¹, Peter Koděra¹ & Ľubomír Jurkovič³

¹Department of Geology of Mineral Deposits, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Comenius University, Mlynská dolina, Ilkovičova 6, 842 15 Bratislava, Slovak Republic
²Slovak National Museum – Natural History Museum, Vajanského nábrežie 2, 810 06 Bratislava, Slovak Republic
³Department of Geochemistry, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Comenius University, Mlynská dolina, Ilkovičova 6, 842 15 Bratislava, Slovak Republic

Abstract

In the year 2006 the company EMED Slovakia determined at the locality of Biely Vrch near Detva the presence of a new type of porphyry mineralisation with a relatively high Au/Cu ratio that in the literature is marked as Au-porphyry mineralisation. This type of mineralisation was not described in Western Carpathians yet. Low content of metals and big amount of ore in porphyric systems requires exploration by open pit methodology which produces a big volume of mining waste. Main goal of this research was a characterization and qualified categorization of mining waste, which will be potentially created by exploitation of the Biely vrch deposit. This will enable to predict and prevent environmental problems related to mining and processing of ore. The results of chemical analyses of water extracts showed extremely low content of Sb, Cd, and Mo (under detection limits). Also the content of other parameters monitored (As, Cu, Fe, Pb, Zn, S) were relatively low, especially in comparison with total chemical analyses. The total average value of Net Neutralisation Potential (NNP= NP-AP) was set as 43.06 kg of CaCO₃/1000 kg of material and was calculated for all the samples from the database. Acidification Potential (AP) was calculated for every sample, in case of Neutralization Potential (NP) average value (42.65 kg of CaCO₃/1000 kg) for selected 60 samples was used for calculation. Based on this assessment, we can say that 3.64 % of the samples are potentially able to produce acidity and 7.06 % of the samples are in the field of uncertainty. Most of the studied samples (89.3 %) does not produce any acidity.

Key words: Biely vrch deposit, mining waste, risk assessment, neutralization potential

Manuscript received: 2016-08-24

Revised version accepted: 2016-10-26