Grantee Research Project Results

Final Report: Reducing Mercury Pollution in Small-Scale Mining

EPA Grant Number: SU836776
Title: Reducing Mercury Pollution in Small-Scale Mining
Investigators: Smith, Nicole M
Institution: Colorado School of Mines
EPA Project Officer: Page, Angela
Phase: I
Project Period: September 1, 2016 through August 31, 2017
RFA: P3 Awards: A National Student Design Competition for Sustainability Focusing on People, Prosperity and the Planet (2016) RFA Text |  Recipients Lists
Research Category: P3 Awards , P3 Challenge Area - Safe and Sustainable Water Resources , Sustainable and Healthy Communities

Objective:

The purpose of this project is to identify and develop socially and economically appropriate, context-specific, technological interventions aimed at eliminating or reducing mercury use in gold processing by artisanal and small-scale miners in Suriname.

The project targeted the following objectives:

1) Utilize existing institutional knowledge and site-specific data to identify socially and economically appropriate opportunities for mercury reduction or elimination at ASGM sites in Suriname.

2) Construct a proof of concept prototype of a mercury-free or mercury-reduced process, which demonstrates a viable opportunity for introduction into the Surinamese ASGM processing system.

3) Utilize the process of Human Centered Design to meet the Humanitarian Engineering Program’s pedagogical goals for project-based learning.

4) Develop a methodology for designing ASGM technological interventions, which can be applied at other sites around the world.

The scope of this project included tasking a senior design team at Colorado School of Mines with developing a technological intervention for ASM ore processing systems in Suriname that would eliminate or reduce the use of mercury in their current systems. Students were to develop a prototype that was socially and economically feasible given the ASM sector’s constraints, as well as to insure that the prototype would fit in with their current ore processing systems.

Summary/Accomplishments (Outputs/Outcomes):

The data for this project were collected during fieldwork conducted by the PIs during the summer of 2015. Students used these data and collaborated with an artisanal and small-scale miner and an ASM expert, both from Suriname, during a weeklong visit in October 2016 to the Colorado School of Mines by the miner and the ASM expert. The Humanitarian Engineering Program at the Colorado School of Mines funded this visit. During this visit, Colorado School of Mines students were able to brainstorm possible prototype designs and assess the feasibility of these designs with the miner and the ASM expert. At this point, the student team decided to develop a jig that would fit into the current ore processing system and that reduced the amount of mercury added to the processing scheme. The team successfully designed the jig and presented it at the EPA P3 symposium. Attachments to the final report included the senior design team’s final report and P3 poster. These attachments outline the process undertaken by the student design team and the outcomes.

Conclusions:

The primary limitation of this project is the inability to field test the prototype in Suriname. The PIs intend to pursue funding avenues for this phase of the project; however, they did not pursue funding from Phase II of the P3 program because of a lack of capacity.

Journal Articles:

No journal articles submitted with this report: View all 2 publications for this project

Supplemental Keywords:

Artisanal and small-scale mining, mercury, gold processing, sustainable development, developing countries