ARTIFICIAL ACID-MINE DRAINAGE FOR USE IN LABORATORY SIMULATION STUDIES

Acid mine drainage (AMD) collected in the field is often highly variab le and deteriorates rapidly on storage, This makes laboratory based st udies on toxicity, treatment, buffering and dilution of AMD difficult and expensive. To overcome this problem AMD was simulated in the labor atory for routine use. Simulated AMD is chemically similar to real AMD , and has similar acidity and toxicity. It is found to be more stable than real AMD and to produce more reproducible results in laboratory e xperiments. Details of simulated AMD are given.