What is a tailing basin?

What is a tailing basin?

Tailings basin means a natural or artificial impoundment in which gangue or other refuse material resulting from the washing, concentration or treatment of ground taconite iron ore is confined.

What is the purpose of tailings?

Tailings are the waste products from mining. Mechanical and chemical processes are used to grind up rock into a fine sand to extract the valuable mineral or metal from the rock ore. All the unrecoverable and uneconomic remnants from this process are waste.

How tailings are formed?

Tailings consist of ground rock and process effluents that are generated in a mine processing plant. Mechanical and chemical processes are used to extract the desired product from the run of the mine ore and produce a waste stream known as tailings.

What are in tailings?

Oil Sands Tailings. In oil sands mining operations, tailings are a mixture of water, sand, clay and residual bitumen, and are the by-product of the extraction process used to separate the oil from sand and clay.

What are tailings and slag?

As nouns the difference between slag and tailings is that slag is whipped cream or slag can be apoplexy while tailings is the waste that remains after the minerals have been extracted from an ore by ore dressing; gangue, slimes.

What are the risks of tailings?

When rain falls on tailings, it leaches away materials that can create water pollution, for example, lead, arsenic, and mercury. Sulfuric acid is sometimes produced when water interacts with tailings, or it can be a by-product of ore processing.

What are the concerns of tailings?

There are several environmental concerns that are associated with the existence of tailings ponds. The main problem with the ponds is that they include toxic and harmful chemicals such as ammonia, mercury, and naphthenic acids. The water containing these chemicals is toxic to animals, particularly aquatic organisms.

What are tailings in copper?

Copper tailing is the solid waste material left during the purification of the precious copper from the copper ores. Disposal of these waste tailings are very essential as it destroys the ecological environment.

How do tailings affect the environment?

Tailings. Mining processes produce an excess of waste materials known as tailings. Tailings have great potential to damage the environment by releasing toxic metals by acid mine drainage or by damaging aquatic wildlife; these both require constant monitoring and treatment of water passing through the dam.

What are tailings and why can they be a problem?

Tailings are a type of rock waste from the mining industry. When a mineral product is mined, the valuable portion is usually embedded in a rock matrix called ore. Tailings deposited as large piles can cause a variety of environmental problems: Slumps, landslides.