Bull Environ Contam Toxicol
DOI 10.1007/s00128-016-1858-8
Electrical Behavior of Copper Mine Tailings During EKR
with Modified Electric Fields
Adrian Rojo1 Henrik K. Hansen1 Omara Monardez1 Carlos Jorquera1
Paulina Santis1 Paula Inostroza1
Received: 17 December 2015 / Accepted: 16 June 2016
 Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016
Abstract Electro-kinetic remediation (EKR) with sinu-
soidal electric field obtained simultaneously with DC/AC
voltage reduce the polarization of the EKR with DC volt-
age. The DC voltage value defines the presence of a peri-
odic polarity reversal of the cell and the electrical charge
for electro-kinetic transport. In this case, the AC frequency
favors the breaking of polarization conditions resulting
from the EKR with DC voltage. However, with high fre-
quencies a negative effect occurs where the tailings behave
as a filter circuit, discriminating frequencies of an electric
signal. The goal of this work is to analyse the electrical
behaviour of tailings in EKR experiments. The conditions
selected were: DC/AC voltages: 10/15 and 20/25 V (peak
values), and AC voltage frequencies 502000 Hz. When
the AC frequency reaches 2000 Hz, the copper removal
tends to zero, indicating that the tailing behaves as a high-
pass filter in which the DC voltage was filtered out.
Keywords Electro-remediation
Sinusoidal electric field

Filter circuit
Mine tailings
EKR is an in situ treatment technology for restoring con-
taminated hazardous waste sites (Acar and Alshawabkeh
1993). The conventional practice of this alternative treat-
ment uses a DC electric field that generates a current
through electrodes placed in a humid solid waste, thereby
causing the mobilization and removal of contaminants
(Probstein and Hicks 1993). Using this method, the applied
electric field promotes transport of pollutants mainly by
& Adrian Rojo
adrian.rojo@usm.cl
1
Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Mara, Casilla 110-V,
Valparaiso, Chile
electro-migration and electro-osmosis in the solution con-
tained in the pores of the contaminated waste.
In the case of treating mine tailings, previous work
(Rojo et al. 2006) has shown that the conventional DC
system was limited with regard to metal removal efficiency
and high electrical energy consumption. In this context, the
chemical nature of the tailings is the main difficulty,
because they are partially oxidized sulphides as a conse-
quence of physicalchemical changes due to weathering
and bacterial action during disposal. The dissolution and
the subsequent transport of contaminants are therefore
restricted to the oxidized species of the tailings. With a
limited amount of the species available for the electro-
kinetic transport, low removals and high energy con-
sumption resulting from significant increases in polariza-
tion over time can be expected. However, despite the
limitations of the process for treating tailings from copper
mining, due to the large amounts of the material accumu-
lated in mining operations, EKR is a valuable tool for
stabilizing this residue, removing pollutants from the oxi-
dized species to mitigate the risks of contamination by
leaching into nearby water aquifers.
The use of this remediation technology will apparently
imply the periodic application of an electric field to remove
the soluble copper that will previously have been generated
over time. The remediation action for this heterogeneous
solid waste is to remove the oxidized copper in the tailings
and in this way to make the final residue more stable.
Under this scenario, sinusoidal EKR applying an electric
field with the simultaneous application of DC ? AC volt-
ages (Rojo et al. 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014) was investigated.
In this case, the resulting electric field is a sinusoid with an
offset corresponding to the DC voltage value (see Fig. 1),
and the electro-kinetic transport is the result of the positive
electrical charge obtained when DC ? AC voltages are
123

Fig. 1 DC ? AC electric field as power source for EKR
applied simultaneously. The application of a DC ? AC
electric field as a power source for electro-remediation of
organic contaminants in soils and removal of nitrate com-
plexes has recently been investigated (Ha et al. 2009). In
some cases, the combination DC ? AC voltages can pro-
duce a periodic polarity reversal of the system electrodes,
as observed in Fig. 1. For this case, a cyclic process with
two stages is obtained, one stage with direct polarity of the
electrodes followed by a reverse polarity stage. In this case
the electro-kinetic transport corresponds to a positive net
charge obtained during this cyclic process.
Briefly, in the application of EKR to copper mine tail-
ings, this type of electric field produces conditions that
reduce polarization, because it is an alternating field with
periods of polarity reversal. When such an electric field is
applied, the frequency of the AC voltage is the variable that
favors the breakdown of the quasi-static polarization con-
ditions promoting the conventional DC EKR. However, by
applying an electric field that combines DC ? AC voltages
for the EKR of the tailings, this residue may behave as a
filter circuit, a system that discriminates a frequency range
of an electric signal passing through it.
Frequency response and sinusoidal EKR of copper mine
tailings The frequency selection mentioned above may be a
desirable capability in certain high-performance electronic
systems, but may be a limitation to the performance of a
sinusoidal EKR that combines a DC voltage (frequency
zero) and AC voltage (frequency [50 Hz). As expected
when a sinusoidal EKR with simultaneous DC ? AC
voltages is applied, copper removal from the cell will
increases by increasing the frequency of the AC voltage,
however the removal would become negligible if a cut-off
frequency is reached that is typical of a high-pass filter.
The frequency-selective circuits are called filters for
their ability to filter out certain input signals, depending on
their frequency. In practice, there is no frequency-selective
circuit that can completely filter out certain frequencies,
but it attenuates the effect of input signals whose
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Bull Environ Contam Toxicol
frequencies are outside of a given frequency band (Nilsson
and Riedel 2011).
To understand the action of a filter, it is necessary to
understand the concept of the transfer function, which
represents the starting point of the filters frequency
response and a simple way to calculate the effect that is
verified on the input signal. Here the focus of the analysis
will be in those cases where the input and output voltages
are sinusoidal, according to the sinusoidal EKR under
study. In that case, the transfer function is the ratio of the
Laplace transform of the output voltage and the Laplace
transform of the input voltage, H(s) = Vo(s)/Vi(s).
Those signals that pass from input to output of the cir-
cuit are part of a frequency band called pass-band, and
those signals that are not contained in the pass-band are
part of what is called the band-stop or band-reject.
To identify the type of filter, one must examine its fre-
quency response diagrams. These graphs show how the
transfer function changes in amplitude and phase. For the
amplitude, the transfer function magnitude versus fre-
quency is called the amplitude response (H(jx) vs. x) and
represents the gain as the frequency varies. In the case of
the phase, the transfer function versus frequency is called
the phase response (h(jx) vs. x) and represents the phase
delay between the input and output voltage. For this par-
ticular case, the phase response does not provide infor-
mation of interest because during the EKR only the input
signal of AC is sinusoidal, therefore the offset of the
sinusoid: delay or advance, does not attenuate the effect of
the DC ? AC input signal.
Figure 2 shows the ideal amplitude response of the four
main categories of filters:
(a) Low-pass filterlow frequencies are passed, high
frequencies are attenuated.
(b) High-pass filterhigh frequencies are passed, low
frequencies are attenuated.
(c) Band-pass filteronly frequencies in a frequency
band are passed.
(d) Band-stop filter or band-reject filteronly frequen-
cies in a frequency band are attenuated.
According to Fig. 2, the low-pass filter and the high-
pass filter have a band-pass and a band-stop defined by the
cut-off frequency xc, which separates them. In contrast, the
band-pass filter and the band-stop filter have two cut-off
frequencies xc1 and xc2 that define the frequency range in
which either allow or prevent the passage of the input
signals respectively.
The main goal of this work is to determine the electrical
behaviour of mine tailing from the copper industry with the
application of EKR using a sinusoidal electric field with the
simultaneous application of DC ? AC voltages. This
Bull Environ Contam Toxicol
Fig. 2 Ideal amplitude
response of the four main
categories of filters: a low-pass,
b high-pass, c band-pass, and
d band-stop
investigation is part of the search for a remediation tech-
nique to environmentally stabilize the large amount of solid
waste generated by the Chilean copper industry
(COCHILCO 2011; Minera Chilena Magazine 2010).
Materials and Methods
The electrical behaviour of tailings using EKR with an
electric field obtained by mixing DC ? AC voltages was
analysed by remediation experiments previously performed
over a period of 7 days (Rojo et al. 2014). In these
experiments, a synthetic mine tailings were prepared with
fine sand (\200 lm), copper concentrate (chalcopyrite)
and copper sulfate pentahydrate. Based on data from
Minera Los Pelambres (Antofagasta Minerals 2012), the
synthetic sample was adjusted to 820 mg/kg of total copper
in the tailings with 45 % soluble copper.
In all experiments, a sample of approximately 1.5 kg
solid dry weight of the synthetic waste mentioned above
was adjusted to an initial humidity of 20 %, using sulfuric
acid solution. A schematic description of the experimental
setup is shown in Fig. 3, basically consist of a cell, a power
source for DC ? AC, and instruments for measuring
electrical parameters online. The experimental cell was an
open acrylic rectangular box (30 cm long 9 10 cm
wide 9 10 cm high) divided in three compartments. The
power supply, which combined the DC ? AC voltages,
was connected to the cell by two titanium rods immersed in
the lateral electrode compartments. Both nylon mesh
(149 lm) and filter paper (grade 131) were used to separate
the central compartment from the electrode compartments.
The pre-treated synthetic mine tailings were placed in the
central compartment. The initial electrolyte in the anode
compartment was distilled water, while the initial elec-
trolyte in the cathode compartment was distilled water with
the pH adjusted to a range between 2 and 4 using a dilute
(1 M) sulfuric acid solution.
In all experiments a periodic polarity reversal of the
system electrodes was observed, because the DC ? AC
voltage were 10/15 [V] (effective voltage or RMS 14.6
[V]) and 20/25 [V] (RMS 26.7 [V]). The six selected
experimental conditions to determine the filter effect are
shown in Table 1. The AC voltage frequencies considered
were between 50 and 2000 Hz; four and two frequency
values for the experiments with RMS of 14.6 and 26.7 [V],
respectively. A conventional reference EKR with 20
[V] DC was included.
In addition, to complement the behavior of the tailings
circuit as high-pass filter and low-pass filter, short-term
EKRs (period of 2 days) for the same synthetic tailings and
fixed conditions of the above experiments were performed.
The objective of these experiments was to determine both
filter cut-off frequencies, low-pass and high-pass, quanti-
fying only the net and the total electric charge during the
experiment. For this purpose, three combinations of volt-
ages DC ? AC were selected: 8/10, 10/25 and 20/30 V,
and for each combination of DC ? AC voltage a DC EKR
with the same corresponding RMS was carried out.
Results and Discussion
Table 2 shows total and soluble copper overall removal
from the cell as percentages, obtained from a material
balance before and after the EKR experiments. In general,
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 Bull Environ Contam Toxicol

Fig. 3 Experimental setup

Table 1 Summary of the experimental conditions In this context, because the filter effect is the ability to
Exp. Applied potential DV (V) Frequency fVAC
selectively filter different frequencies in a circuit, this
(Hz) effect may be a limitation to the performance of a sinu-
DC AC RMS Vmaximun Vminimun soidal EKR that combines voltage signals with different
0 20 20 frequencies. In this case where only two voltage signals are
1 10 15 14.6 25 -5 50 mixed in the tailings (tailings = circuit) during EKR,
2 10 15 14.6 25 -5 500 DC (frequency zero) and AC (502000 Hz), two EKR
3 10 15 14.6 25 -5 1000 conditions encountering the undesirable filter effect can be
4 10 15 14.6 25 -5 2000 obtained: EKR with a pure DC voltage signal (AC out) or
5 20 25 26.7 45 -5 1000
EKR with a pure AC voltage signal (DC out). The filters
6 20 25 26.7 45 -5 2000
related to these two EKR conditions are known as the low-
pass filter and the high-pass filter, respectively.
According to the results of Table 2, special phenomena
comparing experimental removal with the conventional have been observed to be associated with the higher fre-
reference EKR with 20 [V] DC, it is seen that the use of a quencies of the AC voltage, which require a better under-
sinusoidal electric field favoured overall copper removal in standing of the electrical behavior of the tailings when a
the EKR cell. sinusoidal DC ? AC EKR is applied.
For the experimental conditions tested, copper removal Sinusoidal EKR with voltages of DC ? AC = 10/15
with a sinusoidal EKR with 14.6 [V] RMS is twice as [V], producing an RMS of 14.6 [V], shows a steady
effective as the conventional EKR 20 [V] voltage DC, increase in the removal of copper (total and soluble) if the
when the frequency of the AC voltage reaches 500 Hz. frequency of the AC voltage increases from 50 to 1000 Hz.
This example shows the important role played by the fre- However, when the frequency of the AC voltage is
quency of the AC voltage for the sinusoidal EKR proposed increased to 2000 Hz, removal is negligible. The same
here, because with a lower electric field intensity the effect was observed for the experiments with
copper removal of a sinusoidal EKR (14.6 [V] DC ? AC) DC ? AC = 20/25 [V], RMS 26.4 [V], obtaining a neg-
can overcome the copper removal of a conventional EKR ligible removal going from 1000 to 2000 Hz. These
(20 [V] DC), only increasing the frequency of the AC removals show that EKR behaved as if the experiments
voltage to above 50 Hz. were carried out with a pure AC voltage signal. This can be

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Bull Environ Contam Toxicol

Table 2 Overall removals of

Exp. Frequency fVAC (Hz) RMS (V) Overall removal (%)
total and soluble copper,
frequency AC Voltage effect, Total copper Soluble copper
for Veffective 14.6 and 26.4 V
0 20 8.8 19.9
1 50 14.6 3.1 5.8
2 500 18.0 31.9
3 1000 24.5 47.9
4 2000 0.4 1.0
5 1000 26.4 21.5 55.3
6 2000 -0.5 -1.3

explained by the presence of a high-pass filter that has a Table 3 Net and total electric charge for short-term EKRs, RMS
14.6, 20.3 and 26.7 V
cut-off frequency between 1000 and 2000 Hz.
Finally, the presence of a low-pass filter could not be Applied potential DV (V) Frequency fVAC (Hz) Charge (C)
detected as clear as the high-pass filter, based on the results DC AC RMS Qnet Qtotal
shown in Table 2. Comparing copper removals between
conventional EKR with 20 [V] and the sinusoidal EKR 10 10 0.12 0.12
with an RMS of 14.6 [V], approximately equivalent 8 10 10.7 50 0.22 4003
removals are obtained between 50 and 500 Hz. However, 200 0.39 4238
to check whether the low-pass filter is established, it would 500 19 8385
be necessary to compare the results of the sinusoidal EKR 1000 220 4758
of 14.6 [V] with a conventional EKR of 10 [V] as a ref- 1250 0.08 14,518
erence. In summary, as in the sinusoidal EKR of 14.6 [V], 20 20 0.44 0.44
the copper removal always increases in the frequency range 10 25 20.3 50 0.06 2717
of 501000 Hz. The low-pass filter does not seem to be a 1000 4900 11,655
problem because the low-pass filter is disabled easily with 1500 8496 22,542
increasing frequency, without risking the importance of the 2000 17 16,239
process. 29 29 0.07 0.07
On the other hand, the experimental conditions and 20 30 29.2 50 19,305 21,897
results of the short-term EKRs selected to determine the 1500 12,705 15,130
cut-off frequencies (low-pass and high-pass filter) are 2000 11,657 12,477
shown in Table 3. Three RMS conditions 10.7, 20.3 and 4000 10,420 11,908
29.2 V were selected, and the frequency of the AC voltage
varied in the range of 504000 Hz. For all experiments the
net and the total electric charge was determined. Thus,
varying the frequency of the AC voltage for each
DC ? AC voltage combination, the cut-off frequency for
the low-pass filter can be determined when the total electric
charge equals the corresponding DC EKR, and the cut-off
frequency for the high-pass filter can be identified when the
net electric charge becomes zero.
Figure 4 shows the net electric charge Qnet in Coulombs
vs frequency of the AC voltage fVAC in Hz for the short-
term EKRs with different RMSs. As in a EKR that com-
bines DC ? AC voltages the net electric charge is the
response whose magnitude is proportional to the electro-
kinetic transport of contaminant species, it can be assumed
that Fig. 4 is similar to the frequency response that displays
how the filter transfer function changes with the frequency Fig. 4 Net electric charge Qnet in C versus frequency fVAC in Hz for
short-term EKRs to different RMSs (on the graphic Qnet for 10.7 V is
of an AC voltage signal. 15 times the experimental value)

123

Fig. 5 Real amplitude response of a band-pass filter
According to what was expressed in the previous para-
graph, when the net electric charge tends to zero, the cut-
off frequency of the RMSs 10.7, 20.3 and 29.2 V for the
high-pass filter are approximately 1250, 2000 and higher
than 4000 Hz, respectively. To display better the high-pass
filter behavior in Fig. 4, the net charge for 10.7 V the
experimental values were multiplied by 15 times. So when
comparing the experimental net charge vs. frequency for
20.3 V with the corrected net charge for 10.7 V, the curves
obtained are very similar, since a sharp reduction in the net
charge is observed when the cut-off frequency is reached.
However, for the experimental values with 29.2 V of RMS,
as shown in Fig. 4, the behavior as a high-pass filter is not
so obvious because the sharp reduction is not observed
when increasing the frequency of the AC voltage. In this
case a sustained decreases in the net charge is obtained by
increasing the frequency, therefore the behavior rather
resembles the real amplitude response of a band-pass filter,
as schematically presented in Fig. 5.
For the cut-off frequency of the behavior as low-pass
filter, the results in Table 3 show that for all RMSs 10.7,
20.3 and 29.2 V, the total electric charge for each
DC ? AC voltage combination would equals the corre-
sponding DC EKR, for frequencies of the AC voltage
lower than 50 Hz.
For the experimental conditions selected in this discus-
sion the conclusions are:
Better copper removal and lower energy consumption
results can be obtained by only increasing the AC
voltage frequency.
For 7 days EKRs when the frequency of the AC voltage
reaches 2000 Hz, the tailings sample behaves as a filter
circuit, specifically as a high-pass filter.
In this case the high-pass filter attenuates all frequency
components below a specific cut-off frequency. In the
experiments 4 and 6 (Table 2), the removed DC voltage
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Bull Environ Contam Toxicol
signal did not produce the net charge to promote
electro-kinetic phenomena for remediation.
In 7 days sinusoidal EKR with simultaneous applica-
tion of DC ? AC voltages, the activation of a high-pass
filter can be considered as a limitation.
In the case of high-pass filter coincidences between the
determinations of the cut-off frequency were observed,
evaluating copper removal by material balance (7 days
EKRs) and evaluating net electric charge (2 days
EKRs).
According to what was observed in 2 days EKRs, the
cut-off frequency increases with the RMS, and it seems
that the high-pass filter becomes a band-pass when the
RMS reaches 30 V.
In a large-scale EKR operation with DC ? AC volt-
ages, a filter effect can be detected with instruments
that measure the net electric charge.
Acknowledgments This work was supported by the UTFSM Project
27.15.38.
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