Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The long term focus of the proposed research, building on work developed over the last 15 years, is to improve understanding of various factors influencing the performance of tailings technologies, including tailings that are dewatered by various means (thickening, filtering, in-line flocculation) before or at the point of deposition, to recover water, improve density, and increase deposit stability. The applicant's long-term goal has been to reduce technical uncertainties and therefore costs associated with such technologies. The moral and financial impetus for development of alternative tailings technologies (or to increase the robustness of current practice) is most prominently driven by the two inter-related risks of dam failures with catastrophic consequences (such as Mount Polley in Canada, in 2014, Brumadinho in 2019), as well as the need is to accelerate tailings dewatering and densification to develop deposits that will support landform and ecology restoration in a reasonable time frame. These issues are very serious as they threaten the social licence of the global mining industry, an industry in which Canadian companies and Canadian professionals play a prominent role. A recent number of failures, including the aforementioned Brumadinho incident that claimed 270 lives, has sparked numerous regulatory efforts in Canada and around the world, in part due to unprecedented pressure by investment groups to prevent further catastrophic incidents. The safety and the environmental performance of mining operations in Canada is also a justice issue, as mines are often built in remote areas, frequently impacting on remote, often Indigenous, communities. Improving the safety of tailings deposits, before and after closure, is therefore of paramount importance to the industry's future. The focus of the current proposal is to link how the implementation of particular tailings deposition technologies will influence the distance the tailings with travel in the event of a dam breach, or a slope failure.  As a specific example, if an operator chooses to deposit dewatered tailings (thickened, filtered), improving the strength properties through desiccation and compaction, how does this effect the behaviour of the tailings in the event of a breach? What will be the volume of tailings leaving the impoundment? What will the key properties  governing the runout? In other words how will the operator be rewarded by their investments in improving tailings deposition, through reduction in risk of failure and failure consequence.