Consolidation of clay particles in aqueous tailings suspensions is a major obstacle to effective management of oil sands tailings ponds in northern Alberta, Canada. We have observed that microorganisms indigenous to the tailings ponds accelerate consolidation of mature fine tailings (MFT) during active metabolism by using two biogeochemical pathways. In Pathway I, microbes alter porewater chemi...

Phytostabilization is a remediation technology that uses plants for in-situ stabilization of contamination in soils and mine tailings. The objective of this study was to identify native plant species with potential for phytostabilization of the abandoned mine tailings in Nacozari, Sonora in northern Mexico. A flora of 42 species in 16 families of angiosperms was recorded on the tailings site an...

Naphthenic acids (NAs) are natural constituents in many petroleum sources, including bitumen in the oil sands of Northern Alberta, Canada. Bitumen extraction processes produce tailings waters that cannot be discharged to the environment because NAs are acutely toxic to aquatic species. However, aerobic biodegradation reduces the toxic character of NAs. In this study, four commercial NAs and the...

The successful establishment of revegetation using native plants is crucial to help phytostabilization of mine tailings. To assess arsenic (As) and copper (Cu) pollution levels and the feasibility of using native plants in rehabilitation of mine areas, a preliminary investigation was conducted to measure As and Cu in mine wastes and native plants at Telfer Gold Mine. The top layer of soil/mine ...

A detailed search and re-evaluation of the known historical cases of tailings dam failure was carried out. A corpus of 147 cases of worldwide tailings dam disasters, from which 26 located in Europe, was compiled in a database. This contains six sections, including dam location, its physical and constructive characteristics, actual and putative failure cause, sludge hydrodynamics, socio-economic...

This study was carried out for the purpose of investigating the issue of tailings dams as a potential source of contamination by trace elements in soils at the Sidi Bou Othmane mine in the Marrakech Region, Morocco. Soil samples taken from depths of up to 15 cm and within a radius of 50 m from the tailings dams, were analyzed for Cd, Cu, Pb and Zn using atomic absorption spectrometry. Average c...

separation method that is widely used in coal beneficiation for the separation of fine coal particles from associated minerals in water slurries. Since the cumulative recovery of a component in the concentrate is proportional to flotation time, the flotation process can be considered as a time-rate recovery process (Emad, Mohammad, and Bahram, 2010). Therefore, the general mathematical flotatio...

The concern about enhancing the productivity of Salitre phosphate mines has led to an extensive research and development program on new reagents, aimed at sustainable processing ore, with greater production concentrate and, consequently, less waste disposal in tailings dam. Flotation is most widely applied technique for rocks, using mainly fatty acids their salts as collectors. In partnership B...

Abstract Deinked pulp flotation column has been applied in wastepaper recycling. Bubble size in deinked pulp flotation column is very important during the flotation process. In this paper, bubble images of deinked pulp flotation column were first caught by digital camera, and then the bubbles were detected by using a detection algorithm based on sparse and redundant image processing. The result...