In general, tailings dams are expected to seep. Anomalous seepage, especially when induced by internal erosion, is a major concern for owners and operators. The long established techniques for monitoring water seepage provide sparse information which may not be sufficient to detect and map the seepage path. Hence, there exists a great need for non-invasive techniques that would be sensitive to changing seepage conditions. The non-invasive nature of the techniques is particularly important because drilling and other penetrating (invasive) investigation methods are normally avoided. / Non-invasive techniques such as self-potential and high-resolution resistivity have been significantly improved in the past decade and have been successfully used for water retention dam investigation and monitoring. The main difficulty in the use of these techniques in monitoring sulfide rich tailings dams is the presence of electrochemical potentials that renders the interpretation of the acquired self-potential data difficult. / Numerical modelling is one of the latest methods in interpreting self-potential anomalies induced by liquid flow. But, in order to model streaming potentials several parameters need to be measured or estimated; (1) the hydraulic driving force and the hydraulic conductivity are required to solve for the hydraulic pressure distribution; (2) the cross-coupling conductivity distribution is needed to calculate the conduction current source parameter; and (3) the resistivity distribution is needed to determine the resulting potential distribution. / The zeta-potential and the resistivity of three pyrite rich tailings from the Abitibi region in Quebec were measured over the pH range 2 to 5 in different KCl aqueous solutions for the purpose of estimating the magnitude of electrokinetic effect induced by mine water seepage and the electrical resistivity variation induced by particle migration. The experimental and theoretical results obtained in the present study are pertinent to the interpretation of self-potential data. The zeta-potential was found to vary from -27 to -2 mV and the resistivity of the tailings was found to increase when fine particles are eroded.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.115872 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | El Husseini, Bassam. |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Mining and Materials Engineering.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002840558, proquestno: AAINR66646, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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