Araruna José Tavares, Sanchez Ronald Mejia, Qi Xuejiao, Wang Hongtao, Liu Shuguang, de Souza Rodrigo Fernandes Magalhães, Manhães Paola Machado Barreto
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Rua Marquês de São Vicente, 225, Rio de Janeiro, 22451-900, Brazil.
College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tongji University, 1239 Siping Road, Shanghai, 200092, People's Republic of China.
Bull Environ Contam Toxicol. 2022 Jul;109(1):44-50. doi: 10.1007/s00128-022-03551-1. Epub 2022 Jun 14.
Mining operations lead to the production of large quantities of mineral waste, such as fluid fine tailings whose disposal is rather challenging. In Brazil, tailings disposal is facing a critical situation due to the large accidents that took place in the last couple of years. As a response to these accidents, the Brazilian Mining Agency became stricter on licensing mining complexes and issued an interruption on activities on 56 tailings dams. In this paper, the authors propose a promising approach to minimize risks on the existing tailings dams hoping that the industry succeeds at mining avoiding social harms and environmental damages. The results presented herein showed that in situ electrical dewatering is a promising technology that offers many benefits. It can significantly increase the solids content of liquefiable tailings stratum within a short time. This leads to tailings masses possessing higher shear strength. As a consequence, this technology might well lead to safe tailing dams in Brazil bringing socio-economic and environmental benefits.
采矿作业会产生大量的矿渣，比如流动性细尾矿，其处置颇具挑战性。在巴西，由于过去几年发生的重大事故，尾矿处置正面临严峻形势。作为对这些事故的回应，巴西矿业局在采矿综合设施许可方面变得更加严格，并对56座尾矿坝的作业下达了停工令。在本文中，作者提出了一种有望降低现有尾矿坝风险的方法，希望该行业在采矿过程中取得成功，避免社会危害和环境破坏。本文给出的结果表明，原位电脱水是一项前景广阔且益处众多的技术。它能在短时间内显著提高可液化尾矿层的固体含量。这会使尾矿体具有更高的抗剪强度。因此，这项技术很可能为巴西带来安全的尾矿坝，带来社会经济和环境效益。
