1011 building materials. Three conditions must be met to create value: suitability of tailings materials for use, cost-effective treatment, and strong local or regional demand for such products. Tailings can also be reprocessed to recover valuable materials through chemical processing innovations. Mining companies should periodically review the potential for such recovery as technologies and economics may improve over time since the tailings were originally deposited, or future metals such as rare earth metals that might not have previously been considered valuable. Tailings can also provide for recovery of valuable salts or acids through chemical processes. Dewatering of tailings can help reclaim and recover water for further use. This can be achieved through physical mechanisms like conventional filtration and dewatering rolls, or chemical additives to agglomerate solids together in tailings to make them easier to target and remove. Specialized chemistries and physical changes to the pump-pipeline network can enable pumping of thicker slurries and pastes. When coupled with effective thickening technology, these innovations can allow for more complete dewatering in an energy efficient manner. Process water and acid mine drainage (AMD) can be treated through a range of technologies from membranes, thermal and non-thermal approaches, microbial systems, and chemical additives. Such solutions can also help recover valuable minerals in addition to the potential for reclaiming water and improving the environmental impact. This helps enable a closed loop and circular solution for water within mine operations. Trend Spotlight: With the recent emphasis on critical minerals, several governments, including the US, are enacting policy and regulatory changes to support investment in critical mineral recovery from waste and tailings (Gardner, 2025). Geological surveys have identified zinc, germanium, tellurium, and rare earth elements in mine waste. Innovation in hydrometallurgy and leaching processes can enable more efficient recovery of residual metals from tailings that were historically uneconomic to process. A great example of this technology is from Phoenix Tailings, which extracts and refines critical minerals such as rare earth elements from mining waste and tailings-type feedstocks via advanced chemical/electrochemical routes. Their process uses selective ligands to extract and isolate pure metal oxides from waste, followed by molten salt electrolysis to turn the oxides into solid, industrial-grade metal (Phoenix Tailings, 2025). 2.2 Eliminate Waste Early rejection of waste can unlock significant benefits, from requiring fewer inputs to processing due to selectivity, and lower generation of waste. The following opportunities can be utilized to eliminate waste: • Precision mining through technological advancements such as directional drilling and keyhole mining can reduce the waste that is brought to the surface to be processed. Many of these technologies were developed and improved in the oil and gas sector. Additionally, they show promise if they can be adapted for use in mining. • Bulk ore sorting and ore upgrading, such as through CRC ORE’s Grade Engineering approach (Leonida, 2024), enables early waste rejection and improving ore processing efficiency. Ore sorting systems have improved their sophistication, and that can lead to better grade control outcomes. For certain commodities, dry processing can avoid and minimize the use of water, significantly lowering tailings production. Dry processing can include a range of technologies such as dry crushing and grinding, dry separation through air classification, and electrostatic, magnetic, or gravity-based separation, and dry flotation. However, dry processing is challenging due to differences in commodity and mineral types, and the technology is in early stages of development. Some iron ore and REE processing sites have been able to develop dry processing and beneficiation. Trend Spotlight: Advanced sensing solutions are moving beyond single view sorting by integrating data from multiple sources such as X-ray and advanced imaging techniques into a single AI
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM0Mzk2