Acid Rock Drainage Generation Capacity of Tertiary Mudstone in Pohang Basin

Abstract

This study determines the basic properties and acid rock drainage generation capacity of Pohang tertiary mudstone through laboratory experiments. According to X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis results, the mudstone of this area mostly comprised of   with a proportion of approximately 60%, followed in order by    and     . As such, it is clear that there is an abundance of aluminosilicates with a high probability of generating acid rock drainage. The XRD analysis showed that the mudstone contains pyrite (), it is highly likely to generate acid rock drainage, and inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES) analysis results showed that the mudstone samples contained a high amount of   ions. As a result of anion analysis measured by ion chromatography (IC), all mudstone samples were measured to have high    concentrations. According to elemental analysis, the total sulfur (S) content was high, which in turn indicates a high risk of acid rock drainage generation reflected by a maximum potential acidity (MPA) higher than 1%. All in all, although there were slight deviations between the tertiary mudstone samples, overall, the samples exhibited high acid rock drainage generation capacities.