The mean hydraulic residence time and its use for assessing the longevity of mine water pollution from flooded underground mines

Abstract

The prediction of water quality trends, and the forecast of the longevity of mine water pollution are of tremendous importance for strategic decision making and long-term budget planning for water management and treatment in the wake of mine flooding. Numerical simulation tools are able to consider the influence of a huge variety of processes and parameters, however, simple and straightforward methods are sometimes necessary to apply, either for a quick estimate or due to the lack of resources and/or input data. The paper describes a simple approach for assessing the long term water quality of flooded underground mines based on very generic hydraulic data namely the mean hydraulic residence time as a key parameter. The comparison with long term monitoring data for some of Wismut’s flooded underground uranium mines will be used to demonstrate the usefulness, but also the constraints of this approach.