Kinetic reactive transport modelling of column tests for uranium In Situ Recovery (ISR) mining

Reactive Transport in Evolving Porous Media

“…The oil and gas industry performed a substantial amount of research dedicated to understand and optimize the process of permeability enhancement via mineral dissolution with the goal of increasing production rates (Wang et al 1993;Fredd and Fogler 1999;McDuff et al 2010). Another example with relevance to the mining industry is the enhancement of in-situ uranium recovery (Simon et al 2014;Regnault et al 2015;Lagneau 2019, this volume) by using acidic solutions to dissolve uranium-containing minerals. In the case of construction materials, the dissolution of primary minerals is commonly a process that is unwanted.…”

Industrial Deployment of Reactive Transport Simulation: An Application to Uranium In situ Recovery

“…Moreover, representativeness of a (small) sample compared to large heterogeneous ore bodies is limited. Finally, preservation and preparation of samples can significantly alter the behavior of the system; e.g., ben Simon et al (2014) used a mixture of different samples from different parts of ore formation; moreover, oxidation between sample collection and test column led to a significant evolution: very low pH due to pyrite oxidation with air O 2 , oxidation of nearly half the uranium in the system. Nevertheless, these column tests offer perfect opportunities to test and calibrate the reactive paths and kinetics in controlled conditions.…”

Potential aquifer vulnerability in regions down-gradient from uranium in situ recovery (ISR) sites

“…This technique is most effective if carbonates or other acidneutralizing minerals are present as minor constituents in the ore zones and adjacent areas. Carbonate-rich ores require proportionally more acid for equivalent uranium recovery and carbonate dissolution promotes gypsum precipitation that leads to porosity reduction in the ore zone and less efficient uranium recovery (Ben Simon et al, 2014).…”

“…Reactive transport models can be used to help constrain water quality impacts from chemical injections (e.g., Ben Simon et al, 2014). For contaminant transport, a simple equilibrium-sorption approach may be assumed to describe the partitioning of contaminants between the solid and the liquid phases.…”