MC2 team – the Circular Mine Consortium
Themes:
- Avoiding catastrophic failure of tailings dams through monitoring and containment
- Tailings repurposing that results in a step change in existing tailings volumes
- Step changes in the characterisation, extraction and processing of material in the production of tailings volume
Project title: MC2
Research team:
Offering to sponsors:
The project is an opportunity to remove the cost, risks and negative footprint of waste on a mine site. In addition, it aims to leave a positive legacy by recycling local domestic and industrial waste and using a collaborative platform to manage the underground water.
Summary:
The project offers a profitable, safe, and sustainable pathway to zero mine waste.
The project will repurpose tailings in many ways such as carbon sequestration material, creating building blocks, filler cement concrete, artificial aggregates and organic soils. All of these transformations create multiple new income streams for the mine. The organic soil stage can be used to assist with effective rehabilitation and revegetation. Through the repurposing process, the project team will also include tailings filtration in the solution before or during the recycling process, resulting in the elimination or significant reduction of tailings stored on site. This will eliminate the need for tailings dams. The recycling facility can also be used to recycle other waste stream such as industrial and domestic and keep operating even after the mine closure.
The filtration and recycling will result in recovering and treating water with the opportunity to reduce the loss and contamination of underground water. A collaborative platform will be created to facilitate the management of underground water between the different stakeholders in the region, and manage the waste and products made of tailings in relation to the market demand.
The strength of the project is the team’s demonstrated experience and expertise in managing and treating different types of tailings and underground water. The team is a collaboration between globally recognised Australian mining expertise and European recycling leadership.
Benefit to industry:
Economic
- Removes tailings storage and associated monitoring costs
- Eliminates the need to build new storage facilities and closure costs
- Eliminates insurance and closure liability
- Create a future income through recycling production
Environmental
- Reduce impact on the underground water
- Reduce the consequence categories following a tailings dam failure or spillage
- Improved and effective mine rehabilitation with quality topsoil
- Reduce the overall environmental footprint and risk
Social
- Provides a sustainable solution to a mine project
- Leaves a positive footprint after the mine closure
- Improves the general perception of the mining industry
Recordings of each submission are available to Members only. Please click on the link below to request access to the recordings and nomination form.