Seminar program already available! View the program here
Background
Paste and thickened tailings are undergoing a surge of popularity as technology providing great promise for improved tailings disposal with regard to water consumption, deposit siting flexibility, reduced footprint, ease of reclamation and reducing the number of post closure ‘dams in the landscape’. However, the technology has proven to be very difficult to implement with reliability and cost effectively, except in particular circumstances. To take advantage of this promising technology one has either to:
- Understand and improve the technical understanding of paste/thickening as it applies to your tailings to a level that reliable designs and operating conditions can be achieved; or
- Adopt alternative but allied technologies for which designs and behavior are more reliably applied, although at higher cost. In Brazil the alternative technologies are ‘dry stacking’ by hydraulic or mechanical means, and/or filtered tailings dewatering.
Brazil is one of the world’s major minerals mining countries and there is tremendous interest potential for applying new or evolving technology to more efficiently produce these minerals, including improving the environmental and social impacts of mining. There is particular interest in tailings disposal technologies and the adoption of thickened and paste tailings is studied and evaluated for numerous mines. Brazil has forged ahead with the implementation of dry stacking of the sand fraction of tailings, placed by hydraulic means, for the iron ore industry, and with large filtered tailings operations in the bauxite and alumina industry. The combining these technologies, such as sand stacking of cyclone underflow (sands) while applying either paste or filtered thickening to the overflow (slimes), has considerable advantages and potential for Brazil’s mining. The scope of the 2013 Seminar is expanded to address technologies of particular relevance to the Brazilian mining industry. Paste 2013 will attract practitioners and specialists in tailings thickening, dewatering, flocculation, filter pressings, and filtration. Paste 2013 will include topics such as the pumps, pipelines, transport technologies, and operational and management practices for tailings of reduced water content. Tours associated with the conference will include visiting large mines and historic sites of significance, such Ouro Preto, a UNESCO historic site.
The Australian Centre for Geomechanics is the founding body for this seminar series, The Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) and the Brazilian Mining Association (IBRAM) are the institutional sponsors, and InfoMine is the hosting and organising body, assisted by Pimenta de Avila Consultoria.
