The Environmental Geochemistry group aspires to address mine waste challenges across the mine life cycle, particularly during closure and rehabilitation, through innovation in acid and metalliferous drainage (AMD) prediction and source control, and through the development of advanced mine waste and tailings management solutions.
Here is a list of current and past projects undertaken by CERM's Environmental Geochemistry group at UQ's Sustainable Minerals Institute.
Managing waste from mining with live covers and super-plants
(2024-2027) RTCM Trailblazer project administered by Curtin University
This project will deliver a validated, scalable methodology for assessing the long-term performance of vegetated cover systems on tailings storage facilities, providing industry with a practical and cost-effective alternative to large-scale field trials.
Engineered soil cover systems can reduce erosion and limit contaminant fluxes from tailings. However, their long-term performance depends on complex biogeochemical and physical interactions between vegetation and cover layers, which need to be evaluated under a range of climate scenarios. Large-scale field trials are costly and often logistically challenging on operating mine sites, and are not feasible for greenfield projects.
The outcomes will improve confidence in closure design, support the evaluation of rehabilitation performance under different climate scenarios, and reduce uncertainties and risks associated with erosion and contaminant release.
This innovative, cost-effective approach enables facility-scale rehabilitation trials to assess cover system performance using live plants. The results will support sustainable mine rehabilitation planning and demonstrate our contribution to industry innovation
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Quantitive Geophysics for Monitoring and Assessment of Mining Residue Structure
(2024-2027)
Gaining insights into mine waste dumps to avoid environmental legacies
(2023–2026) ARC Linkage Projects
The project aims to develop new methods for identifying pollution source hotspots and pathways inside mine waste rock dumps. This addresses the national need for effective management of Acid and Metalliferous Drainage (AMD), which is now a critical consideration in the viability of new mines and in confronting pollution legacies of old mines. The research will develop and test innovative methods of geophysical and geochemical analysis and their integration that provide 3-dimensional mapping of key physical and chemical features of the dump. Expected outcomes include greater confidence in the ability of the mining industry to manage its AMD liability.
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Delineating water tables and flow pathways inside spoil piles to support water quality predictions
(2023–2025) Australian Coal Association Research Program
Spoil piles have a highly heterogeneous composition and internal structure. Understanding the location and fluctuations of the water table inside spoil piles is essential for the success of progressive rehabilitation plans and mine closure, and in particular for predicting the water balance and water quality of final voids. The overall aim of this project is to detect the spatial and temporal distribution of water inside spoil piles, including the main water table and any perched water tables.
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Improved prediction, remediation and closure of acid and neutral metalliferous drainage (AMD/NMD) sites by examination of mine waste behaviour at the Meso-scale
(2022–2027) CRC TIME Limited
Small-scale kinetic tests such as standard humidity cell test or column leaching experiments are widely used to predict chemistry of drainages from mine waste storage facilities and to assess the long-term performance of remediation measures and constructed covers on mine waste. However, the results from these bench-top tests cannot be directly applied to field scale. This is partly because the complex interactions of solids, water and gases and the microbial activity, inside large-scale waste rock piles and tailings storage facilities, cannot be easily simulated in the laboratory, and partly because those interactions are not well understood and quantified, and it is not clear how the change of scale may affect those relationships.
The aim of this project is to investigate and quantify, through experimental work and numerical modelling at different scales, the significance of parameters that control the chemistry of acid and neutral drainage from mine waste storage facilities and use that information to more accurately scale up the results of kinetic tests.
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Phytomining and Bioremediation: Plants that hyperaccumulate metals
The Centre for Environmental Responsibility in Mining at the Sustainable Minerals Institute studies phytotechnologies for the remediation of mining waste using hyperaccumulator plants. Hyperaccumulators are metal-loving plants that can accumulate metals in above ground tissues up to hundreds or thousand times more than normal plants.
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Scaling biotechnologies for the treatment of acidic pit lakes - Collinsville Coal Mine
(2022–2023) NC Coal Company Pty Limited, Queensland
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Bio-desalination and contaminant removal from pit water using microalgae
(2022) Sojitz Green Pty Ltd
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Mechanisms of uptake and translocation of thallium in Brassica juncea (Indian Mustard)
(2022) Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation
Knowledge of thallium (Tl) uptake and translocation mechanisms in Brassica cultivars is fundamental to developing strategies to inhibit Tl accumulation or, conversely, to utilize these crops for the phytoremediation of contaminated soils.
Through laboratory dosing experiments, scanning electron microscopy, and X-ray fluorescence analysis, this study revealed the presence of highly Tl-enriched crystals within the stomatal openings of leaves.
This observation was further supported by X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) spectroscopy, which showed that Tl(I) was the dominant species in both aqueous and solid phases. The high accumulation of Tl in these Brassica crops has important implications for food safety. Furthermore, the findings provide new insights into the mechanisms governing Tl uptake, translocation, and accumulation in these crops.
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An emerging pulsed power technology for dewatering mineral tailings
(2021–2024) Australian Coal Association Research Program
Other past projects in the group
- Long Term Salt Generation from Coal Spoils (ACARP project C25039)
- Characterising and Predicting Tailings Seepage Chemistry
- Assessment of Mineralogical, Textural and Water-chemistry Changes during Tailings-slurry Transport
- Environmental Geochemistry of Abandoned Mines in the Puno Region of Peru - to Guide Strategic Planning for Regional Development & Legacy Site Management
- Designer Tailings: A Life Cycle Approach to Tailings Management