Water pollution in gold mining industry: a case study in Roşia Montană district, Romania

The preliminary study of streams and rivers from the Roşia Montană area revealed that the concntration of heavy metals— Cd, Mn, Cu, Pb, and Zn—are above accepted limits. The gold extraction method is based on flotation. The most important pollution sources are mine tailings. The determinations were performed for samples collected in: April 2004, July 2004, September 2004, November 2004, February 2005 and May 2005. The highest concentrations were found for cadmium in September 2004: 0.17 mg/L; for copper in September 2004: 1.38 mg/L; for manganese in July 2004: 239.4 mg/L; for lead in May 2005: 0.54 mg/L; and for zinc in September 2004: 35.37 mg/L;. This study involved three small rivers (streams) that flow into the Mureş River and finally into the Danube River, having a great impact on human health and environmental stability in the area. In May 2005, a sample of drinking water from the mining district was also collected.     

Caledonian eclogite-facies metamorphism of Early Proterozoic protoliths from the North-East Greenland Eclogite Province

High-pressure metamorphic assemblages occur in mafic, ultramafic and a few intermediate rocks in a gneiss complex that covers an area of approximately 400 × 100 km in the North-East Greenland Caledonides. Detailed petrologic and geochronologic studies were carried out on three samples in order to clarify the P-T-t evolution of this eclogite province. Geothermobarometry yields temperature estimates of 700–800 °C and pressure estimates of at least 1.5 GPa from an eclogite sensu stricto and as high as 2.35 GPa for a garnet websterite. The eclogite defines a garnet-clinopyroxene-amphibole-whole rock Sm-Nd isochron age of 405 ± 24 Ma (MSWD 0.9). Isofacial garnet websterites define garnet-clinopyroxene-orthopyroxene-amphibole-whole rock-(biotite) ages of 439 ± 8 Ma (MSWD =2.1) for a coarse-grained sample and 370 ± 12 Ma (MSWD=0.6) for a finer-grained variety. Overgrowths on zircons from the fine-grained pyroxenite and the eclogite give a pooled ²⁰⁶Pb/²³⁸U SHRIMP age of 377 ± 7 Ma (n=4). Significantly younger Rb-Sr biotite ages of 357 ± 8, 330 ± 6 and 326 ± 6 agree with young Rb-Sr, K-Ar and ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar mineral ages from the gneiss complex and indicate slow cooling of the eclogitic rocks. High-pressure metamorphism may have been at least 439 Ma old (Siluro-Ordovician) with cooling through amphibolite-facies conditions in the Devonian and continued crustal thinning and exhumation well into the Carboniferous. Sm-Nd whole rock model ages indicate the eclogite protoliths are Early Proterozoic in age, while ²⁰⁷Pb/²⁰⁶Pb SHRIMP ages of 1889 ± 18 and 1981 ± 8 from anhedral zircon cores probably reflect Proterozoic metasomatism. The samples have negative ɛ_Nd values (−5 to −16) and elevated ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr ratios (0.708–0.715), consistent with field evidence that the eclogite protoliths were an integral part of the continental crust long before Caledonian metamorphism. The presence of a large Caledonian eclogite terrane in Greenland requires modification of current tectonic models that postulate subduction of Baltica beneath Laurentia during the Caledonian orogeny. Received: 9 October 1996 / Accepted: 7 July 1997     

The role of ionomolecular surfactant complexes in flotation

The formation of highly surface-active ionomolecular complexes has been suggested recently to be a phenomenon that governs the pH-dependence of hematite flotation using oleate. The differential thermogravimetric work reported in the literature on alkylamine-alkylamine hydrochloride mixtures shows complete complexing of them when present in equimolar amounts. The pH dependence of quartz flotation using amine, speculated in the past to be due to various mechanisms, is discussed in the light of these results. The additional correlation obtained for flotation with surfactant complex formation suggests the role of such complexes in froth flotation to be of wide application.     

艾比湖盐尘对周边地区土壤盐分及景观变化的影响

通过对准噶尔盆地西部艾比湖地区盐尘的扩散和堆积进行观测和取样分析,鉴别出粉尘中可溶盐的化学成分、pH和盐尘堆积强度,分析研究了盐尘的形成、分布特征和灾害强度以及盐尘暴与温度、降水、风等气候因子之间的相关关系.结果表明:近50 a来艾比湖的沉积环境总体是比较稳定的,但由于气候波动与人类活动引起艾比湖水位、水域面积曾发生较明显的变化,并产生了盐尘暴的发生、湖泊和土壤盐度以及湖周景观的变化.根据艾比湖周边盐漠区盐尘的时空分布规律、活动特点和危害强度分析,盐尘对准噶尔盆地西部土壤盐分及景观变化的影响强度范围和影响程度划分为3级区.     

Integration of local–global upscaling and grid adaptivity for simulation of subsurface flow in heterogeneous formations

We propose a methodology, called multilevel local–global (MLLG) upscaling, for generating accurate upscaled models of permeabilities or transmissibilities for flow simulation on adapted grids in heterogeneous subsurface formations. The method generates an initial adapted grid based on the given fine-scale reservoir heterogeneity and potential flow paths. It then applies local–global (LG) upscaling for permeability or transmissibility [7], along with adaptivity, in an iterative manner. In each iteration of MLLG, the grid can be adapted where needed to reduce flow solver and upscaling errors. The adaptivity is controlled with a flow-based indicator. The iterative process is continued until consistency between the global solve on the adapted grid and the local solves is obtained. While each application of LG upscaling is also an iterative process, this inner iteration generally takes only one or two iterations to converge. Furthermore, the number of outer iterations is bounded above, and hence, the computational costs of this approach are low. We design a new flow-based weighting of transmissibility values in LG upscaling that significantly improves the accuracy of LG and MLLG over traditional local transmissibility calculations. For highly heterogeneous (e.g., channelized) systems, the integration of grid adaptivity and LG upscaling is shown to consistently provide more accurate coarse-scale models for global flow, relative to reference fine-scale results, than do existing upscaling techniques applied to uniform grids of similar densities. Another attractive property of the integration of upscaling and adaptivity is that process dependency is strongly reduced, that is, the approach computes accurate global flow results also for flows driven by boundary conditions different from the generic boundary conditions used to compute the upscaled parameters. The method is demonstrated on Cartesian cell-based anisotropic refinement (CCAR) grids, but it can be applied to other adaptation strategies for structured grids and extended to unstructured grids.     

The chemical compositions and surface structures of two roAp stars with lithium spots (HD 83368 and HD 60435)

The spectra of two roAp stars have been analyzed as part of a project to study lithium in magnetic Ap stars. Variability of the Li I 6708 Å resonance doublet and rare-earth lines was detected, which can be explained using an oblique rotator model with the lithium spots located at the magnetic poles. Synthetic spectra obtained at different rotational phases have yielded the first data on the atmospheric chemical compositions of these spotted stars. Using refined atomic data and the most complete line lists has enabled a detailed study of the spectra near the Li I 6708 Å line and computation of the Li I line profile taking into account the spotted distribution of the lithium over the stellar surfaces. The positions of two lithium spots and lithium abundances for each of the spots have been determined.     

Atmospheric sources and sinks of volcanogenic elements in a basaltic volcano (Etna, Italy)

This study reports on the first quantitative assessment of the geochemical cycling of volcanogenic elements, from their atmospheric release to their deposition back to the ground. Etna’s emissions and atmospheric depositions were characterised for more than 2 years, providing data on major and trace element abundance in both volcanic aerosols and bulk depositions. Volcanic aerosols were collected from 2004 to 2007, at the summit vents by conventional filtration techniques. Precipitation was collected, from 2006 to 2007, in five rain gauges, at various altitudes around the summit craters. Analytical results for volcanic aerosols showed that the dominant anions were S, Cl, and F, and that the most abundant metals were K, Ca, Mg, Al, Fe, and Ti (1.5-50 μg m⁻³). Minor and trace element concentrations ranged from about 0.001 to 1 μg m⁻³. From such analysis, we derived an aerosol mass flux ranging from 3000 to 8000 t a⁻¹. Most analysed elements had higher concentrations close to the emission vent, confirming the prevailing volcanic contribution to bulk deposition. Calculated deposition rates were integrated over the whole Etna area, to provide a first estimate of the total deposition fluxes for several major and trace elements. These calculated deposition fluxes ranged from 20 to 80 t a⁻¹ (Al, Fe, Si) to 0.01-0.1 t a⁻¹ (Bi, Cs, Sc, Th, Tl, and U). Comparison between volcanic emissions and atmospheric deposition showed that the amount of trace elements scavenged from the plume in the surrounding of the volcano ranged from 0.1% to 1% for volatile elements such as As, Bi, Cd, Cs, Cu, Tl, and from 1% to 5% for refractory elements such as Al, Ba, Co, Fe, Ti, Th, U, and V. Consequently, more than 90% of volcanogenic trace elements were dispersed further away, and may cause a regional scale impact. Such a large difference between deposition and emission fluxes at Mt. Etna pointed to relatively high stability and long residence time of aerosols in the plume.