Grant: Alliance Grants

The mining industry is a major contributor to the Canadian economy, but also have a major impact on the environment. One of the biggest technical and operational challenges faced by the industry concerns the generation of huge quantities of mine wastes that must be reclaimed at the end of operations to minimize environmental impacts. Typical reclamation approaches used in Canada usually consist in engineered cover systems to control water and/or oxygen access to the reactive tailings. Access to sufficient natural materials for cover construction can be a challenge, particularly for large mine sites and those located in remote locations. The objective of this partnership is therefore to evaluate the possibility of using cement stabilized tailings to create a low permeability surface layer to protect the underlying reactive tailings from oxidation. More specifically, cement would be used to both isolate sulfide minerals (to control their contamination potential) and improve the hydrogeotechnical properties of the tailings for their use in reclamation. This partnership aims to evaluate the effect of different types of cements and tailings combinations, mixing ratios and compaction degree on the hydrogeotechnical and geochemical properties of the cement-stabilized tailings, including the effect of freeze-thaw and wetting-drying cycles on their durability. One of the main challenges of such an approach being the applicability at large scale, a construction technique used for road construction and soil stabilization will also be adapted and tested in the field in this project.