Technical and Environmental Viability Study of the Use of Coal Ash as Covering Material for Mining Rejects

This work studies the use of ashes arising from the burning of mineral coal as an alternative material to compose a dry coverage system to cover piles of rejects that produce acidity. This coverage system is based on the principle of capillary barriers, which consists of the overlaying of a fine-textured material over a granular material. The proposal is to verify the viability of the bottom ash and the fly ash as a layer of granular material. The ashes evaluated in the present study are bottom ash and the fly ash that were produced at the Jorge Lacerda Thermoelectric Plant. The results showed that the bottom ash proved to be viable for the proposal in the study.