Dry stacking in mine and ore processing waste management – a promising future? A best practice guideline and new approaches
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Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Kemian tekniikan korkeakoulu |
Master's thesis
Authors
Date
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
CHEM3052
Language
en
Pages
103 + 4
Series
Abstract
Despite looking back on decades of mine waste disposal practice, tailings dam failure disasters are still recurring fact today. In the woke of the latest major dam failures of Brumadinho (2019), Mariana (2015) and Mount Polley (2014), alternative disposal technologies are increasingly demanded to prevent failures in the future. One alternative approach is “Dry Stacking”, involving the deposition of mine waste in a relatively dry state. Lacking a central definition, and ‘dry’ being vague, this thesis aims to disentangle different and partly conflicting understandings of Dry Stacking and provide a more distinctive and comprehensive definition of Dry Stacking. The geographic distribution and different day-to-day practices of current and planned filtered tailings Dry Stacking projects in different mineral industries has been analysed and the findings presented. A Best Practice Guideline on how to successfully organise a filtered tailings Dry Stacking project has been developed. The Best Practice Guideline elaborates, how Dry Stacking of filtered tailings qualifies as Best Available Technology regarding tailings management and provides guidance on trade-off studies, waste characterisation, the planning and design phase, the operational phase and the closure phase. Finally, the Best Practice Guideline presents possible new approaches, which, in combination with Dry Stacking of filtered tailings, may have the potential to further improve the performance of the Dry Stacking technology. Ultimately, the future of the Dry Stacking approach is evaluated.Description
Supervisor
Serna Guerrero, RodrigoThesis advisor
Lottermoser, BerndSchlatter, Nils