REPROCESSING AND RETREATMENT
labour standards with renewable energy . Rio Tinto is committed to using innovation to reduce
waste in our production process and extract as much value as possible from the material that we mine and process .”
Along with producing almost 20 % of US copper , Kennecott ’ s smelting process also
recovers gold , silver , lead carbonate , platinum , palladium and selenium , while molybdenum is
recovered from the Copperton concentrator . In
total , nine products are currently recovered from the ore extracted at Kennecott .
The company is also investing in new facilities to extract battery-grade lithium from waste rock at its Boron mine site , in California , and highquality scandium oxide from waste streams at its metallurgical complex in Quebec , Canada .
Tailings ‘ products ’
Weir Minerals novel dewatering process , TerraFlowing™ , could end up also providing miners with value from tailings at their mine sites .
TerraFlowing is an opportunity to produce tailings of a suitable size fraction to construct tailings storage facility embankments or manufacture structural concrete products , as well as shotcrete for reinforcement and support , Weir says . Alongside this , TerraFlowing is also capable of producing dewatered tailings of variable moisture content from a pumpable tailings up to
74 wt % solids , or as a stackable product in excess of 76 wt % solids .
In TerraFlowing , three dewatered tailings streams are produced : a primary cyclone underflow , a secondary cyclone underflow and a centrifuge pulp . These three streams can be combined or used in different configurations , according to Weir Minerals . The complete threestage system offers the ability to produce a stackable product , while the primary cyclone underflow can act as a tailings dam embankment material with the secondary cyclone underflow and centrifuge pulp acting as a thickened tailings to be disposed in a tailings storage facility .
Having unveiled details of the technology in 2020 , the company has already carried out test work on using tailings as a 25 MPa concrete for roadways , a 2.5 MPa , 900 kg / cu . m “ foamed tailings ” product , shotcrete with up to 1,600 J EFNARC standard energy absorption , and “ ultrahigh-strength concrete ” engineered products , Nils Steward , GM Operations and Development , Weir Technical Center from Weir Minerals , told the SME Minexchange 2021 Virtual crowd in early March .
“ There are a range of products capable of being achieved using mine tailings ,” he said .
With a TerraFlowing pilot plant now up and running at one of its mining customer ’ s sites , expect to hear more about how the company could
generate value from tailings in the future .
IM
TerraFlowing is an opportunity to produce tailings of a suitable size fraction to construct tailings storage facility embankments or manufacture structural concrete products , as well as shotcrete for reinforcement and support , Weir Minerals says
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