A Review of Biochar as a Low-cost Adsorbent for Acid Mine Drainage Treatment

Abstract

Mining industry will give an impact for environment such as acid mine drainage.
Acid mine drainage (AMD) is a wastewater that have low pH and high heavy
metals content, several companies only use limestone to reducing pH in acid mine
drainage, it caused by high environmental management cost, but the problem in
acid mine drainage is not only pH. Biochar is a low-cost adsorbent for acid mine
drainage treatment. Several studies inform biochar could reduce heavy metals
from acid mine drainage. This review will explain about biochar as an adsorbent
for heavy metals such as Fe, Mn, Al, Mg, Cu, Zn, Ca, K, Ba, Li, Pb, Ni and Si by
recent studies. Depending on biochar types, heavy metals can be removed by
different mechanism, thus, biochar is a potential material to solve environmental
problems especially caused by mining industry and could reduce environmental
management cost.