Water quality, natural chemical weathering and ecological risk assessment of the contaminated area of vanadium ore in Yinhua River, China: Evidence from major ions and trace elements

• DOI: 10.1007/s11631-021-00509-8
• Publication Date: 2021-11-26T17:02:41Z
• Authors: Delu Li; Yong Xu; Xiaotuan Zhang; Zhidong Yang; Shaofei Wang; Qianyang He; Zhe Jia
• Keywords: 13. Climate action; 14. Life underwater; 01 natural sciences; 6. Clean water; 0105 earth and related environmental sciences

There are abundant vanadium ores in the Cambrian strata in southern Shaanxi, China. Many years of mining activities and surface leaching have polluted the surface water to a certain extent, but the researches on the water quality characteristics and pollution degree are relatively weak. This contribution was organized to investigate the surface water quality by general parameters, including TDS, Eh, pH, DO, TOC, COD, and EC, in the vanadium ore belt (Yinhua River basin). Major ions were determined to detect the water type and natural chemical weathering, while trace elements were used to illustrate their geochemical characteristics and ecological risk assessment of heavy metals. The study found that the surface water was weakly alkaline and mainly dominated from normal to pool grade. The particle size with 1000–10,000 nm of suspended particles was the main carrier of organic matter. The concentration of HCO3− and SO42− in the anions and Ca2+ and Mg2+ ions in the cations were relatively high, and the water type was Ca-Mg-HCO3-SO4 type. Rock weathering had a great influence on surface water, and the weathering products were mainly silicate and carbonate. Compared with the Type river, the contents of V elements showed an obvious positive anomaly, which may be affected by mining activities of vanadium ore and the annual leaching of the tailings pond. As and Cd in the surface water was polluted seriously. The integrated pollution index suggested that the surface water pollution was serious, and the main stream was more serious with the increasing tailings ponds.