Economía circular de los residuos mineros no estructurales: de residuo a recurso

Abstract

Tailings are an inherent waste to the mining industry. Given current environmental trends, a radical shift in mining towards more sustainable actions is needed. Dry-stacked tailings offer the best water management, the lowest storage risks and the greatest rehabilitation possibilities. Unfortunately, dry storage is not the ultimate solution either. It is not sustainable to occupy such quantities of material with the environmental degradation that this entails. Potential applications for these tailings have been sought for years. Some tailings have great potential for use, basically those that have the capacity to be combined to form concretes or bases, generally characterised by great structural stability. However others, those less homogeneous and even volumetrically unstable, are not treated in a general way. This study shows possible applications of these materials with a double objective: to make tailings disappear as waste and to reduce the extraction of raw materials.