Effect of tailings treatment on stability of tailings dams

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4. Effect of tailings treatment on stability of tailings dams

The main objective of this study is to establish an efficient soil treatment scheme that can help enhance the stability of tailings dams constructed using the upstream method. To achieve this objective, the beneficial effects of different soil additives, both non-traditional and traditional are investigated to evaluate the enhancement of tailings strength and hence the stability of tailings dams. This paper only reports on the results for the traditional additives. An experimental program was conducted, which involves the study of employing different additives to improve the shear strength of tailings material in a laboratory setup. It covers both the characterization of tailings materials used and the testing of tailings treated with different additives to improve its stiffness and strength. Tailings tested were two types from mines in Northern Ontario, denoted tailings1 and tailings2. Tailings2 was only used for optimization work with traditional additives utilizing unconfined compression strength (UCS) testing. The rest of the tests are conducted with tailings1. The tailings treatment efficiency is then evaluated in terms of the increase in shear strength and improvement in consolidation behaviour of treated tailings. The treated tailings properties established from the experimental program could be used in studies of tailings dams stability.

9th International Congress on Environmental Geotechnics (ICEG2023)

Resource Mining and Extraction