Case Study: Coal Mine Run Off

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The prevalence of coal mining in Western Pennsylvania has left a legacy of polluted water systems. Run off from old mine sites is very acidic and often contains heavy metals. The main culprit is FeS2 which, when exposed to air and water forms Fe(OH)3 and sulfuric acid (H2SO4). The sulfuric acid lowers the pH of the watershed which can result in the death of fish for pH’s lower than 6.0. The Fe(OH)3 has a solubility that is dependent on pH and can precipitate leaving a reddish toxic sludge at the edges of rivers and wetlands.

Stream impacted by acid mine drainage from an abandoned coal mine (photo credit: epa.gov website)
You have been asked by the EPA of Western PA to calculate the pH of the run off of a particular mine and what volume should be allowed into a river each hour. A safe runoff rate (in L/hr) is defined as one that does not allow the river water to reach pH below 6.0. In addition, you have been asked to determine whether or not Fe(OH)3 will precipitate under these “safe” conditions.
The river that runs by the particular mine flows at a rate of 10,000 L/hr and can be assumed to be pure water for the purposes of these calculations. This means that if one added 0.01 moles of H3O+ per hour the pH would decrease from 7 to 6 and still be “safe”. The mine effluent (run off) contains 0.0885 M sulfuric acid and has an iron (III) concentration of 1.0×10-9 M (For Fe(OH)3 the Ksp = 1.6×10-39). Sulfuric acid (H2SO4) has two acidic protons. In aqueous solution 100% of the first proton is donated to water to make H3O+ and HSO4-. The resulting HSO4- (aq) is in equilibrium with SO42- and H3O+ with a Ka = 0.013. Determine the pH of the effluent solution (note that it will be the result of the sum of the concentration of H3O+ due to the (100%) loss of the first proton and the partial loss of the second proton in the sulfuric acid) and what volume of that solution could be allowed into the river each hour. In addition, determine whether or not Fe(OH)3 will precipitate at this pH (6.0) along the river bank.
Your task is to write a report to your supervisor detailing your findings, your conclusions and how you reached your conclusions. See the assignment requirements for specific things to include in your report.
Note that this assignment will be scored based on the rubric under these questions in the Course Overview page:
Does the work demonstrate thorough understanding of the concepts? Does the work meet the assignment requirements?
Assignment requirements:
An opening paragraph that provides the final results of your calculations and pH of the effluent and the volume that could be allowed into the river.
Additional paragraph(s) that explain how you reached your conclusions
Either typed or neatly handwritten calculations in an appendix that is referred to in the main document where the calculations are discussed and include
The determination of the pH of the effluent.
The volume of effluent that can be dumped (per hour) into the river to maintain a pH > 6.0.
The determination of Qsp for Fe(OH)3 at pH=6.0 and [Fe3+] =1.0×10-9 M and subsequent comparison to Ksp to determine whether or not solid forms.
A typed document with 11-12 point font and 1” margins
A descriptive title centered at the top of the first page
A header with your name typed, and pledge signed on the first page
All prose explanations clearly and concisely written in coherent paragraphs with minimal spelling and grammar errors.
A works cited section and in-text citations for any constants that you look up

 

Sample Solution

hand, is concerned with decayed emotion. An inconsistency in Gothic is that ‘Gothic novelists did not know how to release their own feelings of frustration and rebelliousness. Their fiction is both exploratory and fearful’ as Kilgour tells us. It usually results in the death of a villain. Miles has a valid point about how you cannot constrain Gothic to a particular type of text, preferring to class Gothic literature as a taste or preference. Overall, I will show that the reception of gothic writing-its institutional and commercial recognition as a kind of literature- played a fundamental role in shaping many of the ideological assumptions about high culture that we now associate with the term Romanticism. The Gothic novel was first invented almost single-handedly by Walpole as The Castle of Otranto fits most of the classifications we see in Gothic today. ‘The Gothic, like any genre, depends on a system of classification, and because genres, as Derrida argues, are never pure, and systems of classification, according to Foucault, cannot be verified, one is pressed to investigate and contest the validity of the definitions and conceptions typically attributed to the term “Gothic”, a kind of writing that is evidently heterogeneous and impure’ (Alshatti, A. (2008).). Walpole’s novel was imitated in the eighteenth century, but it was enjoyed widespread influence in the nineteenth century partly because of the era’s understanding in dark and fascinating themes. He could be said to have been influenced by Shakespearean dramas because in The Castle Of Otranto he plays around with mental disturbances, where Manfred seeks to marry the soon to be wife of his dead son Conrad to keep his genes alive throughout generations. Lady Macbeth evidently suffers from a psychotic disorder with the misfortune of hallucinations which can be induced by extreme guilt. She has the sense of heavy guilt because her and her husband killed King Duncan in cold blood. Gothic, it can be argued, was instrumental in the decisive shift towards popular fiction in its modern form, aimed at a brood readership, commercially streamlined, form

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