ICARD-IMWA 2015 is organized to provide an international forum where mining professionals, operators, researchers and suppliers can meet to exchange, interact, analyze and discuss experiences and recent innovations in the area of sound and responsible mine water and effluent management. These proceedings contain 220 abstracts of papers and posters written by authors from 24 countries. The main topics addressed by the abstracts included in these proceedings are: Geomicrobiology, biogeochemical cycles and biomining; Applied mineralogy and geoenvironmental units; Prediction of drainage flow; Prediction of drainage chemistry; Mine water and drainage collection and treatment; Cover design and performance; Scaling from laboratory to field studies; Reliable mine waste management; Reliable mine water operation; Mine dewatering; Mine water management for closure; Mine water geochemistry and Pit lakes.
ICARD-IMWA 2018 is organized to provide an international forum where mining professionals, operators, researchers and suppliers can meet to exchange, interact, analyze and discuss experiences and recent innovations in the area of sound and responsible mine water and effluent management. The majority of the papers included in the proceedings will deal with mitigation, remediation, and responsible mine water management. The conference aims to be a platform for exchanging ideas and experience from mining operations to remediation of abandoned mine sites in various climatic and cultural conditions.
This bulletin provides references to publications written up until 1989 on tailings dams. It divides the references into the following categories: Tailings Sources; Deposition and Disposal Techniques; Safety and Failures; Stability of Tailings Embankments including Seismic Aspects; Material Properties and Evaluation; Legal Aspects; Site Selection and Investigation; Tailings Transportation; Drainage, Seepage and Groundwater; Decants, Water Management; Pollution Control and Environmental Aspects; Closure and Rehabilitation:Monitoring; Instrumentation; Vegetation; Reworking Existing Deposits; General.
A manual providing information (guideline, rather than requirements) that can be used to establish an effective dam drain maintenance program. Provides background information on the purpose of drainage systems and on the design and analysis of drainage systems.
While not specific to tailings, this webinar includes valuable knowledge for tailings engineers. This webinar is divided into two sections: the first part discusses how geo-chemistry plays an important role in everyday practice. Geotechnical and geo-environmental problems are specifically the target. The second part of this webinar addresses principles and tools available to obtain geo-chemical information. Overall, this webinar will provide geotechnical and geo-environmental engineers with a broad overview of the relevance of geo-chemistry in various aspects of the profession and with a guide on how to strategically utilize geo-chemistry tools to reduce materials testing requirements and acquire a competitive edge that can differentiate you in the eyes of prospective clients.
The GARD guide is wiki-structured in a series of chapters that can be accessed through the main page. The guide deals with the prediction, prevention, and management of drainage produced from sulphide mineral oxidation, often termed acid rock drainage (ARD), saline drainage (SD), acid mine drainage or acid and metalliferous drainage (AMD), mining influenced water (MIW), and neutral mine drainage (NMD). The GARD Guide also addresses metal leaching caused by sulphide mineral oxidation. While focused on mining, the technology described will be helpful to those practitioners that encounter sulphide minerals in other activities (e.g., rock cuts, excavations, tunnels). Some of the approaches in the GARD Guide are also relevant to issues arising from reactive non-sulphide minerals. Tailings are one of the materials covered in the guide as they often have potential to produce acid and metalliferous drainage.
While not specific to tailings, this webinar includes valuable knowledge for tailings engineers. For proper utilization of PVDs (also called wick drains) in of saturated fine-grained foundation soils, one must understand their installation, requisite theory, remaining issues and the opportunity of strengthening (not only dewatering) the soil mass. This webinar provides this specific knowledge.
In the practice of geotechnical engineering applied to mining, dry stacked tailings heap projects are analysed by limit equilibrium methods and stress-strain analyses. These methods and model assumptions do not consider the influence of the partially drained conditions, strain softening, and transition from overconsolidated to normally consolidated behaviour of the foundation. This situation can lead to calculations of deterministic safety factors that are often overestimated, according to the nature of the foundation. This article proposes a methodology for numerical modelling of the foundation during staged construction of a heap, and considers loading time as a critical variable in calculating the Factor of Safety of the heap dry stacked of elaborating a numerical model considering the foundation and construction. The physical and geotechnical properties of the materials were derived through the model, and are the interpretation of data obtained from a geotechnical investigation and laboratory testing campaign. Stressstrain analyses are performed for different stacking speed scenarios to assess its influence on the safety factor at each loading stage. The analyses are coupled, where the distribution of stresses and deformations within the foundation and the dissipation of porewater pressures over time are simulated. The results show the evolution of the Factor of Safety, the spatial distribution of the regions with excess porewater pressure, allowing the optimisation of both the rate of rise of the dry stack and external batter slope for the project to minimise ground improvement. It is observed that there is a strong dependence of the coefficient of permeability of the foundation soils on the porewater pressure dissipation time. Numerical modelling considering partially drained conditions allows greater understanding of foundation behaviour and performance during the development of the dry stacked heap. The analysis is considered applicable to both soft soil foundation conditions and conversion of existing wet disposal tailings facilities to dry stacking atop, referred to as piggybacking within the mining industry.
For most of its history, the mining industry in South Africa has not been subjected to comprehensive environmental regulation. In recent years, however, this has changed significantly, and the industry is now required to comply with a complex web of mining and environmental policy and legislation. Despite these regulatory advances, we still grapple with legacy issues, namely how to manage decades of environmental degradation, mining waste and long-term residual and latent impacts and how to equitably and fairly apportion duties, responsibilities and liabilities for the remediation of mining waste. An analysis of the Witwatersrand gold fields and the management of its uraniferous waste provides an excellent example of the complexity of these issues and lessons learnt.
The basic types of tailing dams including upstream, modified centerline, centerline and downstream construction methods are described and the pros and cons of each presented. Key issues that dictate the type of dam to be selected will be discussed. These issues typically include tailing properties, site characteristics, site seismicity, construction materials including tailing and beneficial use of other materials generated by the mining process will be discussed. Alternate types of deposition will be described ranging from single point to multiple spigots to subaerial deposition. Also tailing dams will be compared to water dams to show the differences in design approach. One of the key differences is the approach to the use of drainage.