Tailings

Tailings are the materials left over after the process of separating the valuable fraction from the uneconomic fraction (gangue) of an ore. 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.

Extraction process

The extraction of minerals from ore can be done two ways: placer mining, which uses water and gravity to concentrate the valuable minerals, or hard rock mining, which pulverizes the rock containing the ore and then relies on chemical reactions to concentrate the sought-after material. In the latter, the extraction of minerals from ore requires comminution, i.e., grinding the ore into fine particles to facilitate extraction of the target element(s). Because of this comminution, tailings consist of a slurry of fine particles, ranging from the size of a grain of sand to a few micrometres.

Tailings ponds

Tailings ponds are used to store the waste made from separating minerals from rocks, or the slurry produced from oil sands mining. Tailings are sometimes mixed with other materials such as bentonite to form a thicker slurry that slows the release of impacted water to the environment.

Environmental considerations

There are many environmental considerations when it comes to mining operations. As mining techniques and the price of minerals improve, it is not unusual for tailings to be reprocessed using new methods, or more thoroughly with old methods, to recover additional minerals. Extensive tailings dumps of Kalgoorlie / Boulder in Western Australia were re-processed profitably in the 1990s by KalTails Mining.

See also

• Paste tailings
• Phytostabilisation
• Spoil tip
• Tailings dam

References

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External links

• Tailings.info

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