Compressional dewatering of flocculated mineral suspensions

Abstract

The recovery of water for reuse in minerals processing is an important issue in the reduction of water use in mining, as is the dewatering of tailings to reduce the propensity of "wet" tailings dams. It is common in these dewatering operations to use thickeners whereby polymeric flocculants are combined with the dilute feed to the thickener to aid sedimentation and the subsequent consolidation of particulate materials. Thickeners are the work horses of water recovery and tailings dewatering, and although the basics are well understood, there is still no ability to reliably predict the throughput and underflow density from a thickener based on traditional sedimentation tests and flux analysis..