Abstract:

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. A catch phrase we are all familiar with and have learned to apply to how we manage our personal lives in our households and offices. Viewing this phrase through the lens of mining can have impact on a larger scale. Global population is growing faster now than any other time in history and, in parallel, mineral consumption is growing faster than the population as more consumers enter the market for minerals and global living standards increase (Kesler, 2007). Unsurprisingly, this increased demand has brought with it increased push back. From the G20 Summits to political elections to daily social media trends, conservation has become the focus of many global discussions and subsequently increased the rate of technological innovations and their convergence which have refocused the lens through which many are viewing the future, further driving exponential change in social, political, environmental, and economic spheres (Keenan et al., 2019; Mporas et al., 2020).

It is well known that 100% of ore minerals are not recovered during the milling process. This results in mining operations producing upwards of 25 billion tonnes in solid waste a year, of which nearly 7 billion is mine tailings (Mporas et al., 2020). Mine tailings are the by-product of the production of mineral resources, the rejected and historically unrecoverable (Lu et al., 2018). Traditionally, these highly concentrated slurries are contained by engineered dams, called tailings storage facilities (TSFs), which sit stagnant for long periods of time, often in perpetuity. TSFs pose substantial risks to the environment and human life as the mining industry has experienced an increasing number of catastrophic failures over the past half-century (Azam & Li, 2010; Bowker & Chambers, 2017). The Mining Metric has been displaying exponentially increasing consequence in the event of a tailings dam failure as it is driven by continuously lower grades in identified resources which require higher mine production and therefore increased volumes of waste matched with descending real prices of most metals (Bowker & Chambers, 2017).

The associated environmental issues have pushed tailings to be the most daunting challenge to the entire mining industry (Qi & Fourie, 2019). Consequently, there is much pressure to find safer, more environmentally friendly solutions to the simple disposal of tailings that has characterized mining for centuries (Lu et al., 2018). This data cements the idea that reducing and reusing mine waste can have substantial environmental impact with financial benefits. As mine waste is reduced, the reduction of risks associated with waste storage, such as TSFs failure and water quality maintenance, also gets reduced. Reusing and reprocessing mine waste can result in the recovery of precious metals and other useful minerals, creeping closer to complete recovery while greatly reducing the environmental impact and safety concerns. As for the remaining percent that cannot be recovered, it can be utilized in a variety of fields ranging from construction and remediation to agriculture. This poster focuses on the reuse, which in turn results in the reduction in mine tailings and works toward meeting demand.

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Charles Song