WATER MANAGEMENT & TREATMENT
Weir Minerals can also conduct testing at
customer mine sites to assess the viability of
various tailings management strategies. “Weir
Minerals believes that the dewatering of tailings
has a fundamental role to play in this, and
continues to push the boundaries of possibility,” it
said. As the mining industry gains a better
understanding of tailings, it is vital new and
improved methods of containment and storage are
developed.
Dry stack tailings is now a big focus area. Chris
Knowles, Director of Sales and Marketing APAC,
McLanahan Corporation states: “Without a
socially acceptable plan to responsibly deposit
and rehabilitate these areas you have no project,
and community expectations are increasing
around dry tailings. Multiple technology options
exist to produce and stack dry tailings. There are
no technical limits to achieving this, only a cost
implication. Tailing management is a large and
complex business. Extensive studies on
geochemistry are required to identify a suitable
location; mining engineers and rock mechanic
specialists are required to prepare the TSF;
geotechnical consultants will define and plan the
deposition of material and process engineers and
equipment vendors design and provide the
equipment appropriate to the deposition plan. In
our experience, the larger mining companies are in
fact taking great steps toward alternative tailings
handling initiatives.”
McLanahan was pleased to be offered an
opportunity by Vale a number of years ago (and
well before the dam collapses at the Samarco
operation and then at Vale’s Brumadinho mine) to
participate in a project to assess the feasibility of
initiating dry stack tailings for key sites. This
project involved working with site operations
personnel and an Australian mining process
consultancy, to undertake tailings slurry sampling
in order to form a reasonable understanding of the
sample range. Settling and filtration testing was
conducted to a point where the client was
sufficiently confident to invest in a pilot plant.
Fast forward to the current timeframe and
McLanahan has been selected to manufacture the
tailings thickener for this site. “Our expert
thickener team re-conducted onsite assessments
to determine material variability and to review
current tailings slurry output against the earlier
baseline results. As expected, over a number of
years the mining plan varies, depth of deposit
changes and the mineral process is modified,
giving rise to new optimisation initiatives in the
pilot plant.”
De.mem ‘s bauxite wins
Water and wastewater treatment company,
De.mem, says it has recently received new orders
worth a minimum A$470,000 ($317,202) of
revenue from Metro Mining for work at its Bauxite
Hills mine in Queensland, Australia. The orders
include the delivery of wastewater treatment
equipment, plus a contract award to supply
equipment in combination with the provision of
operations & maintenance services under a build,
own, operate, transfer (BOOT) agreement.
Bauxite Hills, which produced 3.5 Mt (wet) of
bauxite in 2019, is currently carrying out detailed
engineering and design work related to a stage
two expansion at the mine, which could see
annual operating capacity reach 6 Mt (wet) by
2021.
De.mem CEO, Andreas Kroell, said: “We are
pleased to provide our customers with a complete
water treatment solutions offering, which includes
the flexibility of either purchasing or leasing
equipment from De.mem. Our build, own,
operate/BOOT solutions are a key part of our
services business, whereby we are engaged by
leading players from mining and other industries
under long-term agreements for the provision of
water treatment equipment and ongoing
operations and maintenance services.”
This is not the only Queensland bauxite mine
De.mem is currently working on. Back in February
2019, the company secured a 12-month
A$780,000 operations and maintenance contract
to manage potable water and sewage treatment
plants at Rio Tinto’s Amrun bauxite mine in the
state.
De.mem has operated the water treatment
plant at Rio’s $1.9 billion operation since 2016 on a
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