Waste Management in Mining and Allied Industries

Waste Management in Mining and Allied Industries

Sanam Sarita Tripathy1, Bagish Mishra2 , Abhijit Mangaraj3

1Assiastant professor in Civil Engineering Department, GIFT Autonomous College

2M.Tech in Environmental Engineering GIFT Autonomous College

3Assiastant professor in Civil Engineering Department, GIFT Autonomous College

Abstract - Waste management is the systematic assessment of potential hazards, disposal and proper utilization of waste in mining and allied industries. Due to waste there is a great environmental concern and resource constraint. These wastes can affect the environment through it intrinsic property. Proper planning is essential to manage the waste. Management indicates managing wastes in such a way that it would be beneficial in any way. In view of associated environmental hazards and their impacts on public health and safety, efforts must be made to minimize waste generation, systematic disposal practices must be followed, and sound waste management methodologies need to be adopted.

In mining and steel industry, wastes are generated in every stage of the operations and are required to handle properly. The types of waste generated from both the industries are solid, liquid and gaseous wastes. So, waste management involves solid, liquid and gaseous waste management. Therefore, the waste generated can be utilized or can be reused as raw material for other processes if not has to be disposed safely so that it will not affect the environment.

The objective of the waste management in mining and steel industry is to assess the waste disposal techniques used in both the industries as well as their waste management techniques. Field studies have been carried out on waste management in different industries, which include an open-cast limestone and dolomite quarry (BSL) mine, an opencast coal mine (Basundhara OCP) as well as an underground coal mine (Hirakhand Bundia) of Mahanadi Coalfields Limited (MCL) and Rourkela Steel Plant. In the BSL opencast mines that major waste problem is from the generation of the overburden and dust emission. In open cast coal mines due to high production and high mechanization the volumes of waste generated is more. The waste generated is managed by efficient methods. Solid wastes that are generated in the mines are being efficiently utilized for backfilling and the mine wastewater generated is used for fighting fire and used for dust suppression measures. In underground coal mines waste type generated is different, so technique of waste management differs. Depending on the types of various processes to produce steel, diverse number of wastes are generated in RSP as compared to waste generated from mining industry. In steel industry wastes contain some valuable resource in it, generally for solid waste. These solid wastes generated can be raw material for other process and in many cases can be reused. Water analysis for the R.S.P. and a mine was carried out to ascertain impact of waste generation by the two industries on the quality of the water that has been tested. Similarly soil samples from two different mines were analyzed and their characteristics have been reported.

Key Words:  systematic, wastewater, heavy metals, and removal efficiency, mining.