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In mining, tailings or tails are the materials left over after the process of separating the valuable fraction from the uneconomic fraction of an ore.Tailings are different from overburden, which is the waste rock or other material that overlies an ore or mineral body and is displaced during mining without being processed.
Gold mine tailings near Krugersdorp, South Africa. Tailings stratification is the layering of tailings due to the distribution in particle size as well as the difference in specific density . The compactness of the sandy to silty tailings [ 13 ] influences the permeability, which will influence the drainage ability of the tailings and thus the ...
Gold mining is the extraction of gold by mining. ... because it can be mined at a lower grade. Tailings can contain lead, mercury, cadmium, and arsenic.
The mining and processing byproducts collected in tailings dams are not part of the aerobic ecological systems, and are unstable. They may damage the environment by releasing toxic metals (arsenic and mercury among others), by acid drainage (usually by microbial action on sulfide ores), or by damaging aquatic wildlife that rely on clear water.
A gold dredge works by having large buckets that pull the gold-bearing earth up into its machinery to be processed, keeping the gold and spewing the waste (known as "tailings") out the back by way of a stacker. Built on a shallow hull, these dredges did not need a lot of water to operate, as they moved their pond of water with them.
In the twentieth century, a series of mining companies reprocessed the tailings, extracting gold that was increasingly difficult to separate from the gravel. Even though the ore had already been processed, it was the principal source of gold in California for some time.
Golden Sunlight is a conventional open-pit mine with a co-located ore treatment plant using carbon-in-pulp technology as well as sand tailings retreatment, where pyrite is gravity-separated from the cyclone underflow fraction, and reground and leached to recover gold that would otherwise be lost to tailings. In total mine operations employ ...
A dredge in placer mining is used to dig up volumes of gravel and other earth materials, which are sent through sluices to remove gold or other minerals, and the remaining earth materials ("tailings") are deposited behind the dredge in spoil banks.