Commingling of Waste Rock and Tailings to Improve “Dry Stack” Performance: Design and Evaluation of Mixtures

Mine tailings are typically deposited as slurry and stored in impoundment dams. These structures pose a serious geotechnical risk, and are difficult to successfully reclaim at the end of mining. An increasingly common alternative to traditional tailings disposal is “dry stacking”: the placement of t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Minerals (Basel) 2023-02, Vol.13 (2), p.295
Main Authors: Burden, Ralph, Wilson, G. Ward
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Analysis
Coal mining
Configurations
Design
Design analysis
Design theory
Experimental methods
Laboratories
Mine tailings
Mine wastes
Mineral industry
Mines
Mining industry
Mixtures
Moisture content
Oil sands
Performance evaluation
Permeability
Rock
Rocks
Shear strength
Slurries
Stacking
Tailings
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Summary:Mine tailings are typically deposited as slurry and stored in impoundment dams. These structures pose a serious geotechnical risk, and are difficult to successfully reclaim at the end of mining. An increasingly common alternative to traditional tailings disposal is “dry stacking”: the placement of tailings dewatered using filtration in a self-supporting stack. It has been demonstrated that the addition of rock (termed “commingling”) to a filtered tailings stack has the potential to improve the geotechnical performance of the stack and may make large-scale dry stacking more economically viable. This paper discusses the application of commingling to tailings dry stacking, specifically relating to the design and evaluation of commingled blends of waste rock and tailings. The authors present a review of existing mix design theory, and present an extended theoretical model to predict the structure and behavior of blends of waste rock and tailings, based upon mix ratio and density. This paper is based upon established theory, but is extended to consider the case of loosely placed materials and the effect of volume change on structural configuration. The extended model may be used to describe the geotechnical behavior of commingled filtered tailings and waste rock. It is postulated that the geotechnical behavior of blends, and the primary mechanism of volume change, is governed by particle configuration. A brief discussion of experimental methods to evaluate the structure and configuration of commingled mine wastes is also presented.
ISSN:2075-163X
2075-163X
DOI:10.3390/min13020295