Knowledge / Mining & Geoscience / Mine Waste & Tailings

Mine Waste & Tailings

Mine Waste and Tailings: Four materials that behave differently and cannot share assumptions; What processing already removed, and what it concentrated; Volume, depth, sampling grid, and what a surface sample cannot tell you.

All 5 articles are published. Each one states what it needs, what can be concluded with it, and what cannot — and every one stays marked DRAFT until it has had independent geological review.

1. Types: tailings, waste rock, heaps and slag publishedFour materials that behave differently and cannot share assumptions.
2. Why a residue is not a small orebody publishedWhat processing already removed, and what it concentrated.
3. Characterising a tailings facility publishedVolume, depth, sampling grid, and what a surface sample cannot tell you.
4. Vertical heterogeneity, oxidation and the water table publishedWhy a residue changes with depth and age.
5. Reprocessing: conceptual economics and risk publishedWhat has to be true before a residue is worth touching.