COURSE: Is the Future Filtered? Paste and Thickened Tailings Short Course

Thickening of mine tailings is now going beyond the use of large, deep thickeners and addressing a new challenge – filtration of tailings to produce a low water content material that should pose much lower environmental and safety risks than most conventional TSFs. Tailings filtration provides many potential benefits, including improved water recovery and the ability to deposit and compact the filtered tailings to form a stable, engineered landform. However, there are also many concerns and potential pitfalls in adopting a filtered tailings management system, including high capital costs, equipment reliability, clogging of filter cloths, appropriate wash systems and optimisation of placement techniques.

Drawing on experiences from a number of operational filtered tailings facilities, the short course will discuss available technologies, appropriate test programmes to determine relevant design parameters, operational challenges and cost comparisons.