Personal perspective on paste and thickened

tailings: a decade on
D. V. Boger*
1,2
The technology to manufacture designer waste is now available. This paper examines the very
important and positive impact that the International Paste and Thickened Tailings Seminars have
had on developing this technology, examines the current technology and challenges, looks at
the broader environmental perspective and finally, lists some recommendations. The major
conclusion and recommendation is that traditional tailings dams can and should be eliminated for
flocculated fine particle suspensions by producing and stacking a designer paste. Reclamation
can and should then occur concurrently with the paste stacking.
Keywords: Mine tailings management, Paste and thickened tailings, Reducing fine particle tailings
Introduction (our involvement)
Newspaper headlines like Hungary battles to clear up
killer sludge, Mini Tsunami of toxic sludge hits villages
and Toxic sludge oods several villages in Hungary do
not enhance the image of the mining industry. Could the
Hungarian bauxite residue tailings dam failure on 4
October 2010 have been avoided by depositing a dewatered
waste? The most probable answer is yes, as this is the
practice in much of the alumina industry worldwide.
The authors own research for 46 years has been in
rheology and non-Newtonian uid mechanics. The early
and continuing work was in polymer rheology, i.e.
viscoelastic uid mechanics. Particle suspensions became
a parallel interest in 1974 after an approach from Peter
Colombera (now deceased) and Mark Want from Alcoa
in Western Australia. We were introduced to the waste
product of the alumina industry, bauxite residue, more
commonly known as red mud. At the time we thought
that 15 000 t of a ne particle (dry) waste pumped to
disposal at a pH of 13 as a low concentration suspension
(Newtonian uid) was a huge amount of waste. We were
not aware that other miners at that time were producing
as much as 100 000 t (now 240 000 t on a dry basis) of
ne particle waste of a Newtonian uid suspension on a
dry basis, and also pumping the low concentration
suspension to the tailings dam.
We now know that the minerals, oil sands and coal
industries produce on the order of 10 billion tpa of ne
particle waste as a Newtonian uid suspension world-
wide. It was through our work with Alcoa that they were
able to exploit rheology in moving from wet to dry
disposal, a more sustainable practice. We in turn learned
about the alumina industry and its waste and the
techniques needed to measure the rheological properties
of mining wastes.
The majority of the alumina industry has moved to a
more sustainable practice (Cooling, 2007). Our work
continued with Alcoa until the submission of the
Coolings PhD thesis in 2005 (Cooling, 2005). During
this time, both Alcoa and the industry in general went
from pumping a material at a concentration of about
1520% solids to a situation where the material is
handled at y50% by weight solids which has allowed
them to go from a wet disposal dam like those in
Hungary to dry stacking. The industry has not stopped
at this level of improvement. Coolings thesis describes
in some detail, supported with pilot plant data, how
sequestering of CO
2
in the caustic red mud can be used
to considerable advantage. The alumina industry
represents (as the author believes) the worlds best
practice in management of tailings. The key has been
compression dewatering in superthickeners, pumping
non-Newtonian materials and understanding the rheol-
ogy such that the paste material can be spread into
drying pans, dried in the environment and then layered.
The next dening moment in our involvement with
the mining industry and its waste was in 1994 when the
author was a plenary speaker at the XVIII International
Mineral Processing Conference held in Sydney. It
became obvious at this meeting that while the industry
was very interested in mine stope ll materials, they had
little interest in, or were not aware of the alumina
industry and its movement towards dry stacking on the
surface. The communication across industrial bound-
aries, i.e. coppercoalalumina, etc., was not good. With
the advent of the Paste and Thickened Tailings seminars
starting in 1999, these boundaries have been breached
although it is still sometimes difcult to move from one
sector to another; they have different cultures.
The authors rst involvement with the Paste and
Thickened Tailings seminars was at the Perth meeting in
the year 2000. The rst in this series, a learning seminar,
organised by Bruce Regensburg from Syncrude, was
held in Edmonton, Canada in November 1999.
Interestingly, it was the oil sands industry that hosted
the rst meeting. Richard Jewell and the Australian
1
Department of Chemical Engineering, Monash University, Melbourne,
Vic., Australia
2
The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
*Corresponding author, email [email protected]
2012 Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining
Published by Maney on behalf of the Institute and The AusIMM
Received 4 May 2011; accepted 29 October 2011
DOI 10.1179/1743286311Y.0000000019 Mining Technology 2012 VOL 121 NO 1 29
Centre for Geomechanics organised the Perth meeting in
2000 which was originally conceived by Richard and
Ted Lord in 1998. Richard, Ted and somewhat later
Andy Fourie, formed the team that has been the major
driving force in these meetings. The 120-plus number
who attended the 2000 seminar was about the same
number that attended in 1999. In Toronto in 2010, the
number exceeded 400! The meetings rotate around the
world and have been held in Canada, Australia, Africa,
Chile and Europe. What an impact they have had,
particularly on the development of technology for paste
and thickened tailings. But we still have not been able to
get into the minds of the people who write the cheques.
In his opening remarks at the 2000 meeting, Richard
Jewell said, and I quote, It is the practical issues of
producing (thickening) and transporting the high density
product that are addressed in greater detail in this seminar.
The object has been achieved. The very signicant progress
in these areas will be reviewed in the plenary papers in this
meeting but the result has not seen a signicant increase in
the application of the technology to operations.
A 2 day workshop was held immediately before the
2000 meeting and was attended by y30 persons from
around the world already working in the eld. The
meeting established the authors and editors for the rst
Paste and Thickened Tailings Guide which was pub-
lished in 2002 (Jewell et al., 2002). It was here that the
importance of rheology in thickening, pumping and
waste distribution became very apparent. An updated
second edition of the Guide was published in 2006
(Jewell and Fourie, 2006). The guide represents the
denitive reference on the subject.
Richard Jewell started the working part of the
discussion in 2000 by presenting the diagram shown in
Fig. 1, asking the question What is a paste?. It has now
been established that the measure of strength shown on
the ordinate in Fig. 1 is the rheological yield stress and
the concentration is generally reported in weight per
cent. The question as to what is a paste is almost
redundant; a paste has a yield stress! So called thickened
tailings have yield stresses that perhaps do not exceed
10 Pa, while paste can have a yield stress variation from
perhaps 10 to almost 1000 for mine stope ll material.
The alumina industry handles a material with a yield
stress of y40 Pa. There can be a great deal of variation
in the yield stress concentration curve for a particular
industry; Fig. 2 illustrates that variation within Alcoa
World Alumina.
There can also be a great deal of variation from
industry to industry, as is illustrated in Fig. 3. Paste-like
behaviour (rheology) can be observed over a concentra-
tion range from y0?1 to 0?75 mass-% (1075 wt-%).
Concentration does not dene a paste.
Sustainability and the triple bottom line are being
promoted throughout the mining industry, largely
through promoting social sustainability and initiatives
such as stakeholder involvement and community devel-
opment programmes. Environmental issues associated
with tailings waste seem to be avoided in the sustain-
ability argument. The view was reinforced in 2004
when the author attended an Inaugural Sustainable
Development Conference sponsored by the Minerals
Council of Australia, BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, the
two largest resource companies in the world. The theme
of the conference was sustainability and innovation.
The outcome of the conference was to conclude that
more sustainable development in the minerals industry
can in fact lead to innovation and affect the bottom line
in a positive way. What was noticeably absent in the
conference was any discussion of the major amount of
waste produced by this industry and any attempt to deal
more effectively with the ne particle waste which is
produced as a suspension and pumped to storage sites,
where it remains for the life of the mine; even though at
the Johannesburg summit of heads of government, the
Mining, Minerals Sustainable Development Project
Report specically nominated waste as one of the three
1 Original Jewell strengthconcentration curve
2 Yield stress as function of concentration for red mud
from different alumina samples (Pashias, 1996)
Boger Personal perspective on paste and thickened tailings
30 Mining Technology 2012 VOL 121 NO 1
issues for the industry. Later conferences on sustain-
ability and minerals have also avoided a serious
discussion on the waste produced. Are both the industry
and the regulators in denial in regard to the liability to
the taxpayer represented by tailings stored in dams?
Almost certainly, but how do we get them to lift their
game? This is a question which needs to be addressed.
Current technology and challenges
Fiona Sofra coined the phrase Environmental considera-
tions dictate that we must manipulate tailings to t a
particular environment rather than manipulating the
environment to contain the tailings (Sofra, 2000). Hugh
Jones, at the 2000 meeting, was saying the same thing
using the term designer paste. Figure 4 illustrates a
suggested approach for design of a tailings disposal
system. Jones has suggested that this diagram should
start with the intended post-mining land use. An
understanding of the basic shear rheology now plays
an important role in tailings management. Sofra will be
presenting a paper on: The history, state-of-the-art and
future directions in rheology.
Compression rheology (in addition to shear rheology)
is important in thickener design but is much less well
understood. A future challenge is in understanding the
interaction of shear and compression in thickener design
and operation. The research required here is very
fundamental in so far as a three-dimensional constitutive
equation is required for occulated suspensions. The
rheology community has been so preoccupied with
polymers and polymer solutions that the fundamentals
of suspension rheology have largely been neglected. The
gap has been identied largely as a result of a need in
thickener design.
Even with this gap in fundamental understanding,
the progress in practical compression and compression
thickener design and construction has been absolutely
amazing. The topic will be addressed in the keynote
presentation by Fred Schoenbrunn: Dewatering to
higher densities an industry review.
Similarly, there has been very signicant progress in
paste and thickened tailings pumping which will be
reviewed by Angus Paterson in the keynote: An
historical review of past mistakes, lessons learned, and
current technologies. In addition, Lionel Pullum will
present an overview on: What is going on in slurry
pumping.
While thickening and paste materials are being
distributed and/or stacked in many operations, the issue
of predicting beach slopes remains. Paul Sims has the
difcult task of reviewing beach slope prediction
techniques.
The industry is served by thickening experts, pumping
experts, geotech designers of tailings impoundments and
a myriad of equipment manufacturers, most represented
at this meeting. The Paste and Thickened Tailings
Seminars have gone a long way towards improving
communications across these discipline boundaries
which may have been wanting in the past.
A major environmental liability as a result of the
mining industry is acid mine drainage and the heavy
metals carried with the drainage. Acid mine drainage is
usually associated with rock and mine overburden and
has not been a subject for discussion at these seminars.
Do traditional tailings dams present a signicant
potential for acid mine drainage now and in the future,
and if so, can the movement to paste tailings signi-
cantly reduce this liability? Gavin Mudd from Monash
University, Civil Engineering will deal with this question
in his keynote: Paste and thickened tailings friend
against acid and metalliferous drainage? This is a topic
which should be of great interest. If acid mine drainage
4 Suggested approach for determination of tailings dis-
posal system
3 Comparison of yield stress concentration behaviour for ne particle waste from variety of minerals
Boger Personal perspective on paste and thickened tailings
Mining Technology 2012 VOL 121 NO 1 31
can be signicantly reduced and/or eliminated with paste
tailings, then there will be even more incentive to move
in this direction.
The technology is now in place and the risk has been
minimised for implementation of thickened and/or paste
waste disposal. While there are now signicant move-
ments in this direction, what is holding up the change?
COST!
Figure 5 illustrates the costing fallacy. Basically
closure, rehabilitation and long term maintenance of a
tailings dam (facility) are not properly costed. In fact,
these costs have often been an unfunded liability,
a liability sometimes escaped by companies through
bankruptcy and other means. There are many examples;
two that come to mind in the personal experience of the
author are in the Florida phosphate industry and in the
Pennsylvania coal industry. In each case, the individual
States have been left with a signicant nancial liability
for clean up. Yes, performance bonds and/or environ-
mental sureties have become a requirement in many
countries as a means of reducing potential exposure of
governments and the taxpayers from rehabilitation and
long term maintenance costs. Governments will always
carry the can in the end! But these sureties are often
never enough. The Achilles heel of the mining industry is
its environmental record. According to the United States
Environmental Protection Agency, mining has contami-
nated portions of the headwaters of 40% of the
watershed in the western continental USA and reclama-
tion of 500 000 (!!) abandoned mines in 32 States would
cost tens of billions of dollars. This is the situation in a
country which today exhibits the most intense regula-
tions, which was not the case in the past. What of the
rest of the world and particularly the Third World?
A large waste stream produces no prot, so expendi-
ture of upfront capital to improve waste management is
not encouraged and is generally avoided. Net present
value accounting is not a good system to evaluate long
term environmental costs. Another capital cost which is
avoided and often not recognised is that with the
removal of signicant water for recycle in the produc-
tion of a paste, chemical engineering principles would
dictate that a water clean-up step needs to be added to
the owsheet, as is illustrated in Fig. 6. There also may
need to be a bleed stream in the water recycle from the
waste storage which is not illustrated in Fig. 6. The
water clean-up is necessary to remove the components
which will accumulate and contaminate the process. In
the Paste and Thickened Tailings Seminar, there is a
need to hear more about paste production and processes
for cleaning up recycle water. Each application will be
unique in that only certain impurities will have to be
removed in each case.
Challenges and broader perspective
The opening presentation at the Paste Technology 2000
Seminar in Perth was presented by Hugh Jones, Senior
Consultant for Golder Associates in Perth. The pre-
sentation is as relevant today, a decade on, as it was
then. As there were no proceedings published for the
2000 Seminar and because of its importance, I have
appended the Jones (2000) presentation to this paper
which should be read by all delegates at Paste 2011.
Jones (2000) concludes with the statement: Most of
the presentations that follow in this seminar discuss the
technical aspects of paste and thickened tailings Our
challenge is to see that the knowledge being made
available is applied. It is my view [and that of this
author] that this means considering thickened tailings and
paste as risk reducing options for tailings disposal.
In this seminar, once again most of the presentations
will discuss or review technical aspects of paste and
thickened tailings; the major difference is that the
technology has advanced considerably to the extent that
very high yield stress and low water content pastes can
be handled and produced. The knowledge is available
but not applied to the extent that it might be.
To be consistent with the principles and code of
practice for company membership in both the Minerals
Council of Australia and the International Council on
Mining and Metals (London), both of which espouse
lofty and environmental goals such as seek continual
improvement in our environmental performance, I
would have expected more proactive behaviour in
tailings production and management from the major
miners. Instead, they seem to be avoiding the subject. In
the Annual Sustainability Conference of the Minerals
Council of Australia 2010, no mention was made of
waste tailings or its management in the conference
highlights posted on the MCA website. Nor was there
apparently a paper on the subject in the programme.
The technology and its potential within a proper cost
framework (commonsense accounting) are not reaching
the right people. Perhaps it is and they do not want to
know! Basically, we preach to ourselves at these
meetings. We need to inform senior management in
the major mining houses, senior regulators in govern-
ment and those who represent the industry, for
example, the Minerals Council of Australia and the
International Council of Mining and Metallurgists.
Better yet, these people should be invited to the Paste
Seminars and asked to make a presentation on their
5 When costing, examine lifetime picture 6 Not so typical process owsheet
Boger Personal perspective on paste and thickened tailings
32 Mining Technology 2012 VOL 121 NO 1
approach and plans for managing the tailings waste, i.e.
how they are implementing the basic tenets of sustain-
ability: reduce, recycle and reuse. Such a presentation
would be of great interest in regard to the justication,
for example, of the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska
where one of the two tailings dams is proposed to be
225 m high and 7 km long, lling up an entire valley in
a seismic active region at the headwaters of major
salmon spawning rivers feeding the Bristol Bay. Paste
does not seem to be a consideration for the Pebble
Mine where the partners are Anglo-American,
Mitsubishi and Rio Tinto. We in turn (this conference)
should prepare a summary paper on the status of paste
and thickened tailings to be presented at mineral
sustainability conferences worldwide. Lets make a
concerted effort to be heard.
Since the Jones (2000) paper, there have been 21
documented tailings dams failures (WISE Uranium
Project on the web). Ten people were killed in the 4
October 2010 Hungarian disaster and 240 in the Chinese
failure on 8 September 2008. When will we learn?
Einstein said: A problem cannot be solved with the same
kind of thinking that created it and expect a different
outcome.
Companies should be getting the not so subtle
message that the public is responding to their poor
environmental record. For example, the Norwegian
governments wealth fund, the worlds second largest
sovereign fund (465 billion) has divested itself of one
billion dollars worth of Rio Tinto shares because of
complicity in severe environmental damage at the
Grasberg Mine (The Grasberg copper/gold mine in
West Papua discharges y230 000 t/day of ne particle
tailings on a dry basis into the Ajikwa River). Rio Tinto
is a joint venture partner (40%) with Freeport.
Furthermore, the fund has excluded Barrick Gold
Corporation (177 million) and Vedanta Resources
(13?2 million) from the portfolio. One would think that
the licence to operate for the mining industry will be
more difcult to obtain as a result of the environmental
record. To use the Jones (2000) analogy: the rubbish
end of our business still [ten years on] has far too many
bins being spilt over our neighbours front gardens!
Jones (2000) in his introduction to the 2000 Paste
Seminar made a very strong case for paste and thickened
tailings as a risk reduction alternative and highlighted
other advantages in Table 2. The case for is much
stronger now as most of the technological uncertainty
has been removed.
In paste and thickened tailings, we are not talking
about rocket science; we are talking about accounting
practices which encourage degradation of the environ-
ment and regulators (governments) who do not have the
courage to implement the latest technology. There are
two groups of people here the public servants and the
elected representative. Elected representatives are the
ones who lack the political fortitude while the public
servants lack resources in quality and quantity.
Realising that each case can be different, the author
believes that most tailings dams could be eliminated for
occulated ne particle wastes by implementation of
paste thickening. Producing and stacking a designer
paste would allow the concurrent reclamation. Would
not that be a major step forward? Maybe the industry
will take the initiative!
Conclusions and recommendations
Specic conclusions and recommendations have been
made in the text. General ones follow.
1. Read Appendix, Jones (2000) introduction to the
2000 Paste Seminar, which made the case for paste
and thickened tailings a decade ago.
2. As a group (ACG?), lets prepare a summary paper
on the status of paste technology for presentation
at minerals sustainability conferences worldwide.
3. Current accounting practices encourage environ-
ment degradation. Lifetime analysis (common
sense accounting) is essential for ethical manage-
ment of mining waste. How can it be changed?
4. Future paste conferences should be extended and
broadened to include senior management from the
major mining houses, senior regulators and repre-
sentatives of groups like the Minerals Council of
Australia (and other countries) and the International
Council of Mining and Metals. Paste and thickened
tailings conferences have brought us to the point
where issues now are much broader than the
technology itself and need exposure to a broader
audience. An alternative may be to gatecrash a
few conferences such as the proposed Second
International Future Mining Conference 2011,
November 2011, New South Wales, which is now
calling for abstracts.
Acknowledgements
Thanks are given to the great group of research students
who worked on mineral waste related issues: G.
Sarmiento, PhD 1978; Q. D. Nguyen, PhD 1983; N. J.
de Guingand, 1986; N. Pashias, PhD 1996; F. Sofra,
PhD 2000; D. Cooling, PhD 2005; B. Ruse-Hart, PhD
2007. Also to Alcoa WA for their ongoing support; in
particular I thank David Cooling and Don Glenister for
their friendship and support. Finally this paper could
not have been put together without the support of my
colleagues and friends, Hugh Jones and Christine Collis.
This paper has been reproduced with the kind
permission of the Australian Centre for Geomechanics,
The University of Western Australia. The fourteenth
International Seminar on Paste and Thickened Tailings
proceedings volume, 57 April 2011, Perth, Australia.
ISBN 978-0-9806154-3-2, www.acg.uwa.edu.au.
References
Cooling, D. J. 2005. Improving the sustainability of bauxite manage-
ment practices evaluation of bauxite residue carbonisation, PhD
thesis, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia.
Cooling, D. J. 2007. Improving the sustainability of bauxite manage-
ment practices, Alcoa World Alumina, Proc. 10th Int. Seminar on
Paste and thickened tailings (Paste07), (ed. A. B. Fourie and
R. J. Jewell), 315; 2007, Perth, Australian Centre for
Geomechanics.
Jewell, R. J. and Fourie, A. B. eds. 2006. Paste and thickened tailings
a guide, 2nd edn, Perth, Australian Centre for Geomechanics.
Jewell, R. J., Fourie, A. B. and Lord, E. R. eds. 2002. Paste and
thickened tailings a guide, Perth, Australian Centre for
Geomechanics.
Jones, H. 2000. Designer waste, Opening presentation at Paste
Technology 2000 Seminar (see Appendix).
Pashias, N. 1996. The characterisation of bauxite residue suspensions in
shear and compression, PhD thesis, The University of Melbourne,
Melbourne, Australia.
Boger Personal perspective on paste and thickened tailings
Mining Technology 2012 VOL 121 NO 1 33
Sofra, F. 2000. Minimisation of bauxite tailings using dry disposal
techniques, PhD thesis, The University of Melbourne,
Melbourne, Australia.
Appendix
Reprinted from Paste Technology Seminar, Perth,
Australia, 1314 August 2000
Designer waste
Hugh Jones
Golder Associates, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
The management of waste in the mining industry has
historically been very low on the priorities of mining
companies and governments. This attitude was very well
expressed by the Tribunal appointed to inquire into the
disaster at Aberfan in their report issued in July 1967,
some 8 months after that disaster. The three man
Tribunal, chaired by Sir Herbert Edmund Davies,
stated:
At the start of this Inquiry we were aware of the
fact that the great bulk of mining operations take
place below ground and that most of the best men in
the industry are employed there. It is there that the
coal is won and in that direction that the attention of
those employed in the industry is naturally turned.
Rubbish tips are a necessary and inevitable adjunct
to a coal mine, even as a dustbin is to a house, but it
is plain that miners devote certainly no more
attention to rubbish tips than householders do to
dust bins.
Later in the same report, the Tribunal issued a very
strong statement about the way that we, as a mining
industry, go about our tasks and gave us at this Seminar
our challenge. The report states:
As we shall hereafter seek to make clear, our strong
and unanimous view is that the Aberfan disaster
could and should have been prevented But the
Report which follows tells not of wickedness but of
ignorance, ineptitude and a failure in communica-
tion. Ignorance on the part of those charged at all
levels with the siting, control and daily management
of tips; bungling ineptitude on the part of those who
had the duty of supervising and directing them; and
failure on the part of those having knowledge of the
factors which affect tip safety to communicate that
knowledge and see that it was applied.
The management of waste in most of the mining
industry has not, and is not being conducted with the
overall design objective of ending up with a safe, stable and
aesthetically acceptable post-operational tailings structure.
As attendees at this seminar, we all carry some responsi-
bility for the way that our industry operates, as we all have
some role in the siting, control, supervision, direction and/
or communication of safety knowledge about tailings. Our
challenge here is to advance our knowledge, assist others
advance theirs and lead a thrust towards more stable and
safer tailings structures that are considerably more
acceptable to the community. A second challenge will be
to drive this change using cost effective solutions.
Since the Tribunal reported in 1967, many good
things have happened in our industry, but as tailings
incidents over the past few years show, our industrys
record in looking after its dust bins has not improved
as well as would have been expected. Table 1 below
shows that the rubbish end of our business still has far
too many bins being spilt over our neighbours front
gardens! Our challenge is to get our industry into the
mindset that sorts its wastes, some for recycling the
balance for disposal in a safe, stable and aesthetically
acceptable structure.
The general practice in the industry has been to
receive reject slurry from the processing plant and
place it in an impoundment, usually as close as
possible to the processing plant. A range of different
impoundment structures have been developed to meet
the combined challenges of the site and available
resources (cash). All have a common design feature,
and they all have to accept and handle the tailings
stream produced by the process plant. The tailings
stream, in turn, has its properties driven by the
requirements of the metallurgical processing plant
and the need to dispose of the tailings at the minimum
operating cost. Very little real consideration is
normally given to designing the tailings stream so
that it will be placed in a location and in a condition
that will optimise its short and long term safety,
ultimate stability and aesthetic acceptability.
This means that post-mining decommissioning cannot
be undertaken in the most efcient manner for the mining
industry as a whole (i.e. produce a structure that is stable,
safe and acceptable to the community). For example,
many structures today are built using the upstream
method, although it is well recognised within the industry
Table 1 Recent tailings related incidents compiled by WISE Uranium Project, 10 March 2000
Date Location Parent Company Type of Incident Release
10 Mar 2000 Borsa, Romania Remin S.A. Tailings dam failure
after heavy rain
22 000t of heavy-metal
contaminated tailings
30 Jan 2000 Baia Mare,
Romania
Esmeralda
Exploration 50%,
Remin S.A. 44
.
8%
Tailings dam crest failure caused
by heavy rain & snow melt
100 000cu.m. of cyanide
contaminated liquid
26 Apr 1999 Placer, Surigao del
Norte, Phillipines
Manila Mining Corp Tailings spill from
damaged concrete pipe
700 000t of cyanide tailings
31 Dec 1998 Huelva, Spain Fertiberia Dam failure during storm 50 000cu.m. of acidic
and toxic water
25 Apr 1998 Los Frailes, Spain Boliden Ltd. Dam failure 4-5 million cubic metres
of water and slurry
22 Oct 1997 Pinto Valley,
Arizona, USA
BHP Copper Tailings dam slope failure 230 000cu.m. of tailings
and mine rock
29 Aug 1996 El Porco, Bolivia Comsur (62%), Rio Tinto (33%) Dam failure 400 000t
Boger Personal perspective on paste and thickened tailings
34 Mining Technology 2012 VOL 121 NO 1
that this construction method produces a structure that is
highly susceptible to erosion. In a recent paper, Blight
and Amponash-Da Costa (1999) reported erosion losses
of .500 t/ha/year as being quite common on unprotected
tailings slopes, with up to 200 t/ha/year being lost from
vegetated tailings slopes. Structures with these erosion
characteristics are unlikely to be dened as stable or meet
the acceptance of the community, but, as the TV ad says
were cheeeep!
I believe that it is necessary for the industry to
reorientate its thinking with regard to waste management,
particularly tailings, and begin to make real efforts to
design waste streams and structures that are specically
directed towards nominated post-mining land uses and
effectiveness of post-mining closure. In other words, what
we should be attempting to do is to design the structure
from the outset with its nal land use as a major objective
of the design. This means the tailings stream itself should
be an integral and potentially variable part of the design
considerations. In effect, the nal structure must become
a customer of the metallurgical plant rather than a
receiver of the rejects from that metallurgical plant. The
waste should be designed and not just happen, otherwise
our industry will not attain the level of community
acceptance that we require.
Why do we need to change? What are the problems
associated with current tailings systems that we would
like to eliminate through designing our waste? Table 1
listed a number of overseas examples of why change is
needed, but what about Australia? The current practice
of managing tailings in Australia has identied four
chronic difculties:
(i) many structures suffer problems with seepage
(ii) many structures carry supernatant ponds with
potentially toxic levels of chemicals
(iii) post-mining rehabilitation often cannot be
undertaken for many years after tailings deposi-
tion has ceased
(iv) some structures are sources of considerable
dust.
Australia has not recently had the sort of acute tailings
mishap that would be registered on the international
bad boys list, but I am certain that if we do then the
media and public focus on tailings management in the
industry will increase considerably. This will increase the
urgency with which we need to address these chronic
difculties listed above as well as the acute case which
brought us to the public attention.
The elimination of these four chronic difculties would
go a considerable way towards making our industrys
waste management acceptable to the community. The
challenge is to design our tailings management so that:
(i) seepage is (practically) eliminated
(ii) toxic chemicals are not retained in solution on
the structure
(iii) rehabilitation can be undertaken immediately
after cessation of deposition
(iv) the structure is stable against erosion.
The rst three of the above design goals can be effectively
met by managing the tailings as a paste or, slightly less
effectively, as a thickened tailings. None of these three
design goals can be met using the slurry without
thickening. The fourth design requirement can be
addressed through either the current armouring of the
structure wall using run of mine waste, or adding reagents
(cement) to the paste in strategic locations.
Every mine is unique and not every operation would
expect to arrive at the same tailings management solution.
The decisions are rarely clear cut and the weighting
placed by individual operators on various properties
offered by different tailings management solutions will
depend on their individual circumstances. Listed below is
an attempt to subjectively compare the various proper-
ties of the three main tailings management options.
In Table 2, the term paste means a non-segregating
material that has no supernatant water, thickened means
tailings that has been thickened to reduce the amount of
process water being discharged to the tailings structure
and slurry means tailings ex treatment process.
Will the image of our industry change if we are able to
change our way of managing tailings and design for
minimum chronic and acute risk?
One way of addressing this very important question is
to consider some of the consequences of the seven recent
tailings mishaps listed in Table 1. Esmeralda is currently
in administration, possibly on the road to bankruptcy;
Romania and its neighbouring countries are in dispute;
Boliden has a multimillion dollar clean-up bill; BHP
Copper has been subject to legal action in the USA; all
companies have suffered the loss of production during
clean-up and the intangible impact on employees and
company image. If the operators of the projects listed in
Table 1 had been able to predict the acute problems that
they have had, I am certain that they would have
changed some of the design factors that contributed to
their mishaps.
Let us now consider how many of the mishaps would
have occurred and what the overall impact of the
mishaps may have been if the tailings had been placed
either as paste or thickened tailings rather than as a
Table 2 Comparison of properties
Slurry Thickened (CTD) Paste
Final Density Low Medium/high High
Segregation High Slight None
Supernatant water High Some None
Post placement shrinkage High Some Insignificant
Seepage High Some Insignificant
Rehabilitation Delayed Immediate Immediate
Permeability Medium/low Low Very low
Application Above ground Above ground Above and under ground
Footprint Medium High Low
Water consumption High Medium Low
Reagent recovery Low Medium High
Boger Personal perspective on paste and thickened tailings
Mining Technology 2012 VOL 121 NO 1 35
slurry as it appears to have been in the cases in those
operations. In most of the mishaps, the major problem
was reported as the supernatant water and its contained
chemicals rather than the tailings in the structures.
Operating a tailings management system with minimal
or no supernatant water would in most of the cases
prevent the mishap from occurring, while in other cases
the overall impact would have been considerably less if
there had been no supernatant water on the structure.
Overtopping and wall failure are dramatic events that
catch the attention of the world media. They can be
avoided to a very large degree through careful design of
the total waste system.
The industry also need to address some of the less
acute problems associated with tailings such as seepage,
rehabilitation and utilisation of the mine site post-
mining. Table 2 compares the properties of the three
general types of tailings with regard to seepage and
rehabilitation. Utilisation of the mine site post-mining
will depend on the stability of the structure.
At an extreme end of minimising the impact of tailings
disposal at a mine site paste can be placed underground
where it will have the added benet of minimising the
chance of collapse of underground voids. A less radical
option for tailings management is placing tailings in an
abandoned pit, a solution that has been tried with
various degrees of success at a number of operations in
this State. Using thickened tailings or paste rather than
slurry [creates] a major difculty with in-pit disposal,
namely the very long lead time between placement and
the completion of settlement, and hence post-mining
rehabilitation.
Increasingly in the mining industry decisions are being
made on the basis of assessing risk. Looking at the seven
recent examples of tailings mishaps in Table 1 and their
consequences suggests that there is need for the industry to
update its risk assessment models and give due considera-
tion to the real risks posed by failure to correctly manage
its tailings. The current industry practice of usually placing
tailings as ex plant slurry in a structure located close to the
operating plant often results in excessive water and reagent
consumption and an unnecessary exposure to chronic and
acute risks. These risks can be offset to a large degree by
designing the waste stream.
Most of the presentations that follow in this seminar
discuss the technical aspects of paste and thickened
tailings and include many case studies. It is a consider-
able body of knowledge which will be communicated
and shared. This communication of knowledge was one
of the elements missing at Aberfan. Our challenge is to
see that the knowledge being made available is applied.
It is my view that this means considering thickened
tailings and paste as risk reducing options for tailings
disposal.
References
Blight, G. and Amponsah-Da Costa, F. 1999. In search of the 1000 year
tailings dam slope. Civil Engineering, October.
Proc. Int. Workshop on Managing the risks of tailings disposal,
Stockholm, Sweden, May 1997, UNEP, ICME, SIDA.
Proc. Workshop on Risk management and contingency planning in
the management of mine tailings, Buenos Aires, Argentina,
November 1998, UNEP, ICME.
Report of the Tribunal appointed to inquire into the Disaster
at Aberfan on 21 October 1966, HMSO, London, UK, 1967.
Boger Personal perspective on paste and thickened tailings
36 Mining Technology 2012 VOL 121 NO 1