The oil sands mining and extraction processes in Canada produce large volumes of tailings that are a mixture of mainly water, clay, sand, chemicals and bitumen. This residue is deposited into tailings ponds where sand settles faster than fine clays which require many years to fully consolidate. Therefore, land reclamation and water recirculation become significant environmental impacts. The tai...

Numerical simulations of the Fault Lake Tailings were conducted to assess the long-term impact of AMD-generation on downgradient receptors. The effects of impoundment geometry, contrasting permeability, water content, and mineralogy of tailings and native sediments were considered. Simulation results suggest that over a time period of 1,000 years only the top three meters of tailings become oxi...

Abstract The separation of fine mineral particles, especially using environmentally friendly approaches, is one the main problems in processing low-grade ores and re-processing mining tailings. This work assesses potential biosurfactants as collectors flotation ultrafine (smaller than 20 μm) particles hematite malachite. As biosurfactants, we test acetylated acidic (ac-ASL) lactonic sophorolipi...

Tungsten is recognized as a critical metal due to its unique properties, economic importance, and limited sources of supply. It has wide applications where hardness, high density, wear, high-temperature resistance are required, such in mining, construction, energy generation, electronics, aerospace, defense sectors. The two primary tungsten minerals, the only minerals wolframite scheelite. Seco...

In recent years, the industrial use and importance of boron compounds has further increased with the potential application of boron as hydrogen carrier in the form of BH4 in the exploitation of hydrogen as clean energy. Boron compounds can be produced from a variety of boron minerals and boronrich brines. Colemanite (Ca2B6O11.5H2O), ulexite (NaCaB5O6(OH)6.5H2O) and borax (Na2B4O5(OH)4.8H2O) are...

Dispersed clay particles in mine tailings and soft sediments remain suspended for decades, hindering consolidation and challenging effective management of these aqueous slurries. Current geotechnical engineering models of self-weight consolidation of tailings do not consider microbial contribution to sediment behavior, however, here we show that microorganisms indigenous to oil sands tailings c...

As part of a comprehensive research program, new tailings matrices are formulated of combinations of tailings and binder materials. The research program encompasses experimental and numerical analysis of the tailings matrices to investigate the feasibility of using them as construction materials in cold climates. This paper discusses a conceptual cost benefit analysis for the use of these new m...

In order to evaluate the superiority of a filtered tailings storage facility (FTSF) to conventional tailings impoundment in the southern rainy regions of China (SRRC), the tailings slurry leakage and pollution accident occurring at the wet tailings dam (WTD) of Yinshan were analyzed, the properties of the tailings were tested in a laboratory, and the possibility of tailings liquefaction was eva...

Over the past half century, a surprising number of major pollution incidents occurred due to tailings dam failures. Most previous studies of such incidents comprised forensic analyses of environmental impacts after a tailings dam failure, with few considering the combined pollution risk before incidents occur at a watershed-scale. We therefore propose Watershed-scale Tailings-pond Pollution Ris...

This paper presents the methodology developed by the association of Mineração Rio do Norte S.A. with Embrapa/Agrobiologia and the Soil Department of Federal University of Viçosa to promote revegetation of tailings ponds from bauxite mining in Porto Trombetas, Para State, Brazil. The tailings have a fine texture (77% clay), are low in nutrients, have low pH (4.5) and high Pfixation capacity. Thi...