Early Warning of Heavy Metal Pollution after Tailing Pond Failure Accident

Heavy metal pollution is a major issue after tailing pond failure accident. It is important to predict pollution trends for limited data of pollution sources. A simple phase separation heavy metal model was built for early warning simulation of heavy metal pollution accidents. Based on this, a new simulation framework has been developed to predict the pollution trends of the downstream according to the measured data at upstream sections. By setting the upstream monitoring date as the inflow boundary condition, the changing processes of heavy metal manganese (Mn) with different phases in the downstream can be accurately simulated and forecasted. Results showed that the concentration of the suspended phase in the downstream was larger than that in the aqueous phase and sediment phase. With this, the early warning of pollution trends after accidents could be made a few days ahead. It indicates that the impact of sediment on heavy metal should not be ignored in the early warning of tailing pond failure accidents.