Development of the Technology for Conservation of Spoil Heaps in Order to Reduce Its Negative Impact on the Environment and Preserve Resource Potential
Coal mining is accompanied by bulk waste formation in form of spoil heaps from low quality ore. As a result of aggressive natural factors impact specific mineral and chemical composition of rocks, which forms spoil heaps, leads to the environmental man-caused load in form of dust and gas emission, water pollution and adjacent area littering. Thus, lands, where spoil heaps are disposed, are excluded from economic use, and their resource potential gets lost because of wind and water erosion, negative physical, chemical and biochemical processes, and transformation of rocks, which forms spoil heaps, that causes the reduction of its value as secondary resources. It defines the urgency of developing methods aimed at the lowering of ecological load, caused by spoil heaps, to acceptable level and at the preservation of its resource potential as artificial deposits. One of the possible solutions is to fill underground worked-out mine area with stowage materials using low quality ore. But this technology pushes up the cost of coal production and is not applicable to new coal mining objects, which has lack of free worked-out area as well as to waste dumps, accumulated during long years of coal production. One of the most common ways of reducing the negative impact on the environment of already formed spoil heaps is its recultivation. However, recultivation of coal mining waste, which is followed by application of antipyrogens, ameliorants and mineral fertilizers to waste dumps, considerably limits their further utilization as artificail deposits. Antipyrogens, ameliorants and mineral fertilizers, when entering into physical and chemical reactions with coal mining waste, make this waste unsuitable for application as a secondary resource, particularly during the production of many construction materials. It defines the prospectivity of spoil heaps conservation, which allows not only to reduce the negative impact of spoil heaps on the environment but also to preserve their resource potential. This study offers a method, a technology and technical solutions for spoil heaps conservation that ensure their geoecological safety as sources of environmental pollution and allow to use its resource potential for production of target products.