Activated Tailings: Using Mine Waste to Clean up Mine Sites

Activated Tailings, is a product derived from red mud created when extracting aluminum from bauxite ore.  It is an emerging technology, which is effective in removing heavy metals, soluble cyanide, as well as iron, aluminum, manganese and silicate from water.  It does not remove most Group IA (e.g., Na, K…) and IIA (e.g., Mg, Ca…) cations, Group VIIA (e.g., F, Cl…) anions or sulfate.  It can be used as a pretreatment to remove metals that may foul RO membranes, post treatment to remove many metals from the RO or evaporator reject stream and for metals removal for the in-situ treatment of tailings ponds and mine pits.  It can also be used in pellet or powder form in large basins, tanks, in a conventional WWT plant or by spraying slurry into the pit or ponds.  The spent reagent, when dried is a non-hazardous solid, when tested using the TCLP, SPLP and CAL-WET procedures, which requires no special handling.