Best practices for tailings dam design klohn crippen. Many tailings are toxic and must be kept perpetualy isolated from the environment. With innovative products, global field support and industry leading technical expertise, basf mining solutions provides sustainable solutions which increase productivity, recovery and flexibility throughout the mining operations including leaching, solvent extraction. You can directly access the articles in this publication through the search. New technologies on mine process tailing disposal bascetin a. Normally, the coarse tailings settle near the point of deposition, while fine tailings settle towards the beach.
Utilizing its expertise in slurry dewatering technologies, westpro offers turnkey tailings management systems that allows owners to reduce or eliminate costly tailings ponds by producing stackable tailings. Coarse sands are used to buildup the tailing dam, while the slimes are deposited inside the pond. Tailings dam stability analysis of the process of recovery. In addition to the ipd, mrm has also advised that they intend to codispose 7.
Recently, the fine tailings have been observed flowing into rat holes in the salt pile which daylight at the toe of the pile near the south end. Tailings thickened to 55% solids by mass was deposited onto the dam via a spigot. Tailings dam construction design of slime is likely to slide and cause the dam to break away. Steenkamp worleyparsons rsa, johannesburg, south africa the reporting of tailings has historically posed a conundrum in as far as reporting to the correct level of confidence. Subaerial deposition is generally practiced at tailings facilities that have multiple discharge points. Tailings management our tailings group formerly australian tailings consultants has built an international reputation encompassing all aspects of mine tailings management, including tailings testing and characterisation, thickening and dewatering, transport, storage and embankment design, technical assistance during construction, surveillance and auditing, closure and water management. Design, construction and management of tailings storage facilities for surface disposal in china.
A tailings deposition that looks realistic, showing flow originating from each point a spigot at a specified grades outwards until it is bound by the existing ground or a designed embankment. This application greatly reduces the amount of time required to design and model a tailings fill plan. Tailing definition is residue separated in the preparation of various products such as grain or ores usually used in plural. Tailings are distinct from overburden, which is the waste rock or other material that overlies an ore or mineral body and is displaced during mining without being processed. Mine tailings are the ore waste of mines, and are typically a mudlike material. Tailpro uses this information to improve tailings deposition planning and has written inhouse proprietary software to provide a twostep interpretation process. Cerro san cristobal 9511, quilicura, santiago, chile. Because tailings deposition may affect the environment through many. Desiccation contributes to strength but excess desiccation is a concern in sulphidic tailings due to the possibility of oxidation and acid rock. Tailing disposal methods and tailings dam construction design.
Study of tailings management technologies mend report 2. It describes the preferred structure of the design report for tailings storage facilities tsfs that should be submitted to the department of mines and petroleum dmp in accordance with section 4 of the mining proposal guidelines as required by the mining act 1978and the tailings storage facilities in western australia code of practice. Dykes for the fine tailings ponds are constructed with salt tailings. Before the 1960s, mine tailings were often disposed directly into ponds, lakes, rivers or natural topographic depressions, or stored in impoundments supported by earthen dams, without necessarily applying engineering principles mcleod et al. Tailings are slurried with water and pumped to tailing ponds for settling. When these ta ilings are left in an environment in an inappropriate manner. Use of paste technology for surface deposition and underground backfill of tailings provides an attractive method for minimizing the engineering and environmental challenges commonly associated with the disposal of mineral wastes. Knowing the deposition history of a tailings dump and, possibly, past process plant efficiencies, gives an idea of what to expect in terms of mineralogy and metals of interest.
Subaerial deposition is more common than subaqueous as it can form a beach above water baw sloping gently towards the supernatant pond figure 2. Challenges competing factors such as cost, the environment, safety, and technical viability are at the forefront of thinking when todays mining organizations are investing in new tailings systems or retrofitting existing ones. Tailings deposition into open pit consolidation modelling. It is typically much easier to access tailings samples from the perimeter of the storage and a natural bias to relatively coarser results in. The characterization of the water in upper strathcona tailings treatment system water showed that it was acidic ph 2. Today, the universal disposal method for tailings is the tailing pond. Inpit tailings storage, as the name suggests, is simply the process of backfilling abandoned open pit surface mines with tailings figure 1. Water from the lower end of the strathcona tailings treatment system has been treated and. Tailpro consulting was developed to provide a wide variation of specialist tailings testing solutions to the global mining industry, on both a laboratory and industry scale. The fine tailings are currently discharged at the south end of the fine tailings ponds on top of the pile. The engineering characteristics of tailings are in most instances influenced by the degree of thickening and the method of deposition. Through the experience of the founding partners, both in the physical testing of tailings and operation of pilot and full scale processing plants, a testing service to define design and operational parameters for tailings.
Beaching angles and evolution of stack geometry for. The processing and storage of mine tailings is a key environmental issue for mining projects around the world. The procedure usually adopted in such cases is to separate the tailing into coarse sand and fines in a classifier, and to use the coarse product to build up the wall. Rift td advanced tailings deposition modelling software rift td is an advanced threedimensional digital terrain model, specifically developed to model tailings deposition. Tailings recovery can not only reuse of resources,but also eliminate security risks. Worldwide, the storage and handling of tailings is a major environmental issue. Conventional tailings thickened tailings paste cake increasing solids concentration fully sheared yield stress. Generate precise overlap of satellite images to generate videos and imagery of mine and tailings dam development. Geotechnical properties of mine tailings and implications for. The water in slurry forms a pool on the sloped beach. Tailpro resource an interactive tool aimed to improve tailings management and is designed to be used by industry, regulators, designers and operators involved with tailings storage.
As the tailings discharge onto this beach they form shallow low velocity braided streams that allow the tailings to settle and segregate dme 1999. Wide client base in tailings related projects in base metals, precious metals, and oil sands. Approximately 90,000 t of magnetite will be produced during the design life of the project. The tailings deposition area is a portion of the rivers flood plain in the lowlands. Site 1c has a relatively larger embankment length and volume requiring more effort for embankment raises and spigot positioning for tailings deposition and also has a relatively long pipeline to operate requiring larger pumps.
Tailings technology cc, technical services, limpopo. Mine tailings deposition practices, liquefaction potential. Tailings are the materials left over after the process of separating the valuable fraction from the uneconomic fraction of an ore. Tailings is a combination of the finegrained typically siltsized, in the range from 0. Considerations for tailings facility design and operation. Tailpro consulting works with specialist international consultants to provide an integrated solution. Pdf design, construction and management of tailings storage. The influence of depositional methods on the engineering properties of tailings deposits dr. The upper surface of tailings may become dry and partially unsaturated, but the lower. In this technique a low, compacted earth wall is built around the perimeter of the area to be used for storing the tailings. But how can we do this quickly without software like muck 3d and vulcan.
Deposition planning at the diavik diamond mine ubc library. The application will calculate total volume for an individual cycle. Tailings will be produced as three separate tailings streams, pyrite concentrate 7. Frequently, tailings are cycloneclassified before deposition. Laboratory properties of mine tailings request pdf. Since tailings dumps are mostly mined in bulk and not selectively, the mean value of the grade must be determined with a. Deposition modeling of high density tailings using smoothed particle hydrodynamics a thesis submitted to the faculty of graduate and postdoctoral affairs in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree masters of applied science by yagmur babaoglu b. As kuguojing tailings of jiudingshan for example, numerical analysis using ansys software, the process of hydraulic mining tailings three special operating point. It is typically much easier to access tailings samples from the perimeter of the storage and a natural bias to relatively coarser results in the database may thus be introduced. Since tailings dumps are mostly mined in bulk and not selectively, the mean value of the grade must be determined with a high level of confidence. It is therefore essential that while investigating the properties of tailings that the physical characteristics and material parameters e.
The deposition strategy may also result in small areas of low points, which can be filled during operations by extending deposition pipes from existing spigots into the middle of the lowlying areas, filling up the small depressions in the beach with tailings as necessary. Ptfi has designed and constructed a system of levees to manage the deposition of what will ultimately be about 3 billion tonnes of tailings within tailings management controlled riverine. Tailings are sometimes over or underestimated, excluded, or incorrectly reported. Tailings are formed as a result of mine processing. The mount polley tailings breach what took place mount polley tailings storage facility used to store copper. Tailings characteristics can vary greatly and are dependent on the ore mineralogy together with the physical and chemical processes used to extract the economic product. Converting tailings dumps into mineral resources energy. Missouri university of science and technology scholars mine. This allows the deposition of tailings to be rotated between different locations around the facility to allow newly deposited tailings to bleed, dry and consolidate while tailings can continue to be discharged to other zones of the facility. Waiting until year 2 by which point the pit will be partially filled with tailings will help to reduce the haulage.
Oct 02, 2014 a tailings deposition that looks realistic, showing flow originating from each point a spigot at a specified grades outwards until it is bound by the existing ground or a designed embankment. Mend subaqueous deposition of tailings in the strathcona. With innovative products, global field support and industry leading technical expertise, basf mining solutions provides sustainable solutions which increase productivity, recovery and flexibility throughout the mining operations including leaching, solvent extraction, flotation, solidliquid separation and tailings management. Tailings definition, the part of a projecting stone or brick tailed or inserted in a wall. Mining engineering department, engineering faculty, istanbul university, istanbul 344, turkey abstract. Proceedings tailings and mine waste 2011 vancouver, bc, november 6 to 9, 2011 deposition planning at the diavik diamond mine john cunning, allison isidoro golder associates ltd. A case history is presented to illustrate how the tailings dam construction method must be coordinated with the method of tailings deposition. Modelling a tailings deposition using civil 3d kriging. Geotechnical properties of mine tailings and implications. This method is very attractive to a mine operator as worked out voids can be filled at a fraction of the costs associated with designing, constructing and operating a conventional, thickened, paste or. For conventional storage the tailings are generally discharged from spigotsoutfalls located.
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