Utilizing tailings material as strategic minerals and construction material


Utilizing tailings material as strategic minerals and construction material

Dirlich, S.

The Polish-German joint project NOMECOR funded by the STAIR-II-program (BMBF, NCBR) investigated in the utilization of tailings material from a Polish flotation pond. The novel approach was to combine the valorization of strategic minerals with the utilization of the mineral compartments as construction material.
Conventional ammoniacal leaching combined with further processing steps has proven to be successful, while bioleaching was not really possible with the given composition of the material. In addition, the processing of the tailings material to be used as input material in cement production was also technically feasible.
The accompanying assessment of the innovative technologies in technological, environmental and economic respect, however, brought the conclusion that in particular the economic feasibility is not given with the proposed processing steps competing with very low deposition costs. At that stage the implementation concept was reconsidered to be more simplified using part of the tailings material directly after fractioning as construction material for building the dam, which was both technical and econmical feasible.

Keywords: remining; strategic minerals; construction material; tailings; remediation; resource management; resource technology

  • Invited lecture (Conferences) (Online presentation)
    Workshop Sustainable Mining, 06.10.2020, Lima, Peru

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Publ.-Id: 32188