Maximização do desaguamento dos rejeitos minerais gerados pela concentração do minério de ferro

Abstract

In the pursuit to become more sustainable, the mineral industry has sought new technological solutions to decrease its ecological footprint generated by tailings disposal of mineral dressing. In this scenario one of the solutions is the application of solid-liquid separation technologies to maximize the tailings dewatering in order to reduce its volume and to increase water recirculation. The purpose of this work is to evaluate some technological optimization of thickening and filtering to tailings from iron ore processing at Samarco Mineração S/A. The thickening tests results indicated technical feasibility to maximize the tailings dewatering through of adjust of solid concentration on feeding of thickener. In addition to increase the settling rate and solid concentration of underflow the new process configuration bring allows productivity gains to a subsequent filtering step. The filtering tests results indicated to be possible to achieve moisture of cake level for tailings. On this tailings consistency will be necessary less volume to disposal and will promote more water recirculation in iron ore concentration plant.