Comparison of two models for subaerial deposition of mine tailings slurry D. J. Williams and P. H. Morris Synopsis ‘The most common means of mine tailings disposal is by subaerial deposition of the tailings in slurry form from a pipeline. A delta is formed, the profile of which has a direct bearing on the volume available for tail- ings storage for a given containment structure. The hydraulic sorting of particles down the delta profile dictates the engineering properties of the deposited tailings at a particular point; these are relevant to any rehabilitation or reprocessing of the tailings deposit that might be undertaken. There is, therefore, con- siderable merit in being able to predict the profile and hydraulic sorting in advance. An empirical approach developed by Blight and Bentel went a considerable way towards achieving this. An alternative approach, based on sediment transport in rivers, is presented. Results obtained by use of the two approaches are compared for platinum. and coal-mine tailings data. The comparisons show that the river transport approach provides a slightly better match of observed delta profiles and a far better representation of observed hydraulic sorting than does Blight and Bentel’s. Once either approach has been applied to data collected from an existing tailings deposit the profile and hydraulic sorting of future deposits of the same tailings type, deposited under similar conditions, may be predicted. Fine-grained mine tailings typically leave the mineral proces sing plant as an aqueous slurry. The slurry may or may not be thickened, by the addition of flocculants in a sedimentation tank, and is usually pumped to a tailings dam or open-pit for subaerial deposition from the slurry pipe. From the discharge point a delta with a sloping profile is formed and the particles undergo hydraulic sorting according to their size and specific gravity. The profile achieved on deposition has a direct bearing on the volume available for tailings storage for a given containment structure, and there is considerable merit in being able to predict the profile in advance. The ability to model the hydraulic sorting away from the discharge point is useful for predicting the engineering properties—strength, compressibility and, in particular, permeability—of the deposit at different locations. Such information is required for the successful rehabilitation of disused tailings deposits or for assessing the feasibility of raising a tailings dam embankment by the upstream method. A knowledge of hydraulic sorting may also be used to good effect in assessing the suitability of old tailings for reprocessing to recover a salable product, Until recently little attempt had been made to model the profile and hydraulic sorting of mine tailings deltas. However, with the ever increasing rate of production of tailings, dis- posal is becoming a problem and every effort must be made to optimize available storages. Furthermore, during periods of high returns for mining commodities, accompanied by [Manuscript first received by the Institution of Mining and Metal- lurgy on 31 January, 1989; revised manuscript received on 7 June, 1989, Paper published in Trans. Insin Min. Metall. (Sect. A ‘Min. industry), 98, May-Avgust 1989. © The Institution of Mining fand Metallurgy 1989, escalating production costs, the reprocessing of old tailings becomes economically viable. In such circumstances the ‘modelling of tailings deltas assumes major importance. Blight and Bentel! developed empirically a non-dimensionalized relationship to describe the profile formed by selected mine tailings. A model to describe hydraulic sorting down a tailings beach was also developed. Alternative models may be developed by use of the river transport approach. The alter native models are compared with those of Blight and Bentel with the use of their own data for platinum tailings and also data collected by the present authors for coal tailings in the Ipswich coalfields in southeastern Queensland, Australia, Blight and Bentel approach Non-dimensionalized tailings profile Blight and Bentel! performed a curve-fitting exercise on measured profiles for a variety of mine tailings, including diamond-, platinum- and gold-mine tailings. Non-dimen- sionalizing these curves, they found that all empirical data could be reasonably well fitted by a master profile, given by zy a Xx, where 2 is height of sediment above the level of the pool at the end of the profile ata distance x from the highest point of the profile; Z is maximum height of sediment at x= 0; X is overall length of the profile from x = 0 to the pool at the end of the profile; and m is a constant for the given mine tailings at 1 particular initial solids concentration.* Tt should be noted that the symbols used in equation 1 differ from those used by Blight and Bentel. They are used for consistency with the river transport approach. Moreover, the term ‘delta’, rather than ‘beach’ as in Blight and Bentel, is used as it describes the relevant phenomenon more accurately Particle sorting ‘The approaches taken by Blight and Bentel! to describe the hydraulic sorting of particles down a mine tailings delta involved alternative simplifying assumptions. In one deriva~ tion they used as their starting point the generalized equation for fall velocity (Graf) for the unhindered sedimentation velocity of suspended sediment in a quiescent fluid (undergo- ing laminar flow). However, they noted turbulent flow in tailings flow channels—a phenomenon that has also been observed by the present authors in coal tailings flow channels. Unhindered sedimentation applies to aqueous suspensions that undergo substantial (unhindered) vertical segregation during deposition. In their derivation Blight and Bentel assumed that the drag coefficient, Cp, is constant, For spheri- cal sediment particles this assumption is only approximately true for Reynolds numbers, Re, greater than or equal to 400. For sediment with a specific gravity of 2.65, in water at 20°C, this translates to a sediment particle size, D, of > 1.8mm. Typical particle sizes in most tailings slurries are *A List of symbols and their meanings is given on page ATT, ABmuch smaller than 1.8 mm, The higher viscosity of thickened tailings slurries raises the minimum D still further. The assumption that Cp is constant leads to values of D that are inversely proportional to x? and not x, as given by Blight and Bentel ‘Alternatively, invoking Stokes’ law (Re < 0.5,D < 0.1 mm for sediment of specific gravity 2.65 in water at 20°C; that is, finer grained than many tailings slurries) gives D inversely proportional to x°. This approach does not require Cp to remain constant (Cp = 24/Re). Of the two approaches, Blight and Bentel preferred the first—despite its algebraic error. It ‘was in better agreement with experimental data and can be expressed in the non-dimensional form (o5)(@)-™ ° where Dy is D5p (size Uuough which 50% of the material passes) at a distance x down the profile; Dy is Dsy of the overall tailings; and M is a non-dimensional constant of proportionality, characteristic of the given tailings. Equation 2 implies that D approaches infinity as x approaches zero, which is obviously incorrect River transport approach River profiles Shulits,? among many others, observed that natural river profiles fit the slope relation Sy = So exp(—68) % where S, is slope of the profile ata distance x down the river; Spis slope of the profile at x = 0; and B is a positive constant for a given river. Using data from Krumbein,* Shulits showed that equation 3 also applies to an alluvial fan, Sorting ean be ascribed 10 abrasion (abrasion law of Sternberg’), hydraulic sorting, solution or a combination of these. Abrasion isa very gradual process, requiring hundreds of kilometres, and, hence, would be negligible in the case of a tailings dam. The subaerial deposition within a tailings dam is a reasonable approxima- tion to deposition in rivers or alluvial fans, especially in view of the wide range of conformable phenomena noted by Krumbein. These include similar profiles and particle sort- ing, both of which may be described by river transport theory, Fundamentally, the behaviour can be explained in terms of a minimum rate of energy dissipation approach. A thermodynamic analogy is also useful, in which bed height replaces temperature ‘The overall profile, rather than localized slope, is of interest in assessing the capacity of a tailings storage. The overall profile is obtained by integrating equation 3 with respect to. “The integration constant is evaluated by satisfying the boun- dary conditions shown diagrammatically in Fig. 1. The resulting profile relationship can be non-dimensionilized to give gn4 e(-7) — Acexp(—) where and y, a non-dimensional, positive constant, equals 3X, AM & See curve: Arbitrary point (x,2) (0,59) oy Slope curve: M2 = Sge” Asymtotie to @=0 x Fig. 1 integration of slope curve Disgrammatic represertation of profile curve based on Particle sorting in rivers Shulits® observed that particle sorting in natural rivers is represented by Dy = Dyexp(—ax) o where D, is some characteristic particle size (for example, Dag) ata distance x down the river; Dg is Dsyat x = Osand a is a positive constant for a given river, probably related to but not necessarily equal t0 According to Krumbein,* equation 5 also applies to wave- formed beaches, alluvial fans, river deltas and even to the distribution of boulders on mountain sides, despite obvious differences of scale and mechanism, Equation 5 may be non-dimensionalized to enable direct comparison with equation 2, replacing Dy by «Dy (where € = DalDz)s 0 give (o;) (a) =«(a)om(-*x) * where 2, a non-dimensional, positive constant (probably related to but not necessarily equal to y), equals aX. Comparison of Blight and Bentel and river transport profile curves Both profile curves, described by equations 1 and 4, have one degree of freedom—namely, n in the case of Blight and Bentel’s formulation and a in the case of river transport. As a ‘consequence, any misfit with observed data—represented by the sum of the squares of er-ors—can be compared directly for a given data set. A significant difference between the two approaches is that the fitted curve of Blight and Bentel has a slope of zero at x = X for all values of n, whereas in the river transport approach the slope is finite at x = X and only approaches zero as x approaches infinity. The following comparisons make use of observed data for viscous platinum tailings {average solids concentration, '~ 50 we%) and for aqueous coal tailings (average solids concentration, ~ 15 wt%). These two tailings lie near opposite ends of the range for mine tailings. Comparison for platinum tailings data Blight and Bentel! presented 53 data points for platinumRiver transport curve So and Bentel curve Fig. 2. Comparison of profiles for platinum tilings data (data points after Blight and Bentel") tailings in six dams, which are reproduced by appropriate scaling in Fig, 2. The scaling may have introduced minor inaccuracies, although these are likely to be small compared with the scatter of the data, Also shown in Fig. 2 is the Blight and Bentel profile curve and that obtained by use of the river transport approach. The key parameters are compared in ‘Table I. Fig. 2 shows that the river transport curve appears to fic the data better and the sum of the squares of the errors quantifies this as a 27% better fit. The Blight and Bentel curve isa little high over the first half of the profile and alittle low over the latter half. The poorer fit as x/X approaches unity is due to the slope being constrained to zero at that point. Table 1 Profile parameters for tailings data Plasimwn Coat Blight and Bentel! ” 2.195 um ‘Sum of squares of errors 0.0915 0.0264 River wansport y 2.230 1.559 ‘Sum of squares of errors ora 0.0239 No detailed information about the initial solids concentra- tion, particle-size distribution, specific gravity or other properties of the platinum tailings is available to enable their effects on the profile to be studied. However, the amount of scatter in the data plotted in Fig. 2 is not large and it is doubrful whether, given such data, further refinement of the profile curves would be either possible or warranted, Comparison for coal tailings data Aberdare Colliery is located in the Bundamba District of the West Moreton coalfields near Ipswich in southeastern Queensland, Australia, Tailings discharged from a single point on the perimeter of the main coal tailings dam of this colliery have formed a fan-shaped delta. Two profiles were measured radially outwards from the discharge point, giving. 19 data points. Following the practice of Blight and Bentel for measured profiles in platinum tailings dams, the dip in the immediate vicinity of the discharge point—where erosion ‘occurs—was omitted from the profile, and measurements from the highest point of the profile and outwards along each line are plotted in Fig. 3. Also shown in Fig. 3 are the two calculated profile curves. The key parameters are compared in Table 1 River transport curve Fig. 3 Comparison of profiles for Aberdare coal tilings data Again, the river transport curve appears to fit the data better (quantitatively, 11% better), ‘The lack of data points between x/X values of 0.714 and 1 (due to lack of access to make measurements) disguises the probably poorer fit of the Blight and Bentel curve as x/-X approaches unity, Information on the particle-size distribution and specific gravity of the coal tailings is available. However, in view of the small amount of scatter in the data plotted in Fig. 3 it is considered that refinement of the profile curves is not warranted Comparison of Blight and Bentel and river transport approaches for particle sorting ‘A comparison of the predictions of particle sorting based on the respective approaches may be made via equations 2 and 6, Comparison for platinum tailings data Data scaled from the work of Blight and Bentel' are repro- duced in Fig. 4. Any inaccuracies in the scaling process are likely to be insignificant compared with the large degree of scatter of the data, The mean value of M in equation 2 for all values of x). and all X is 0.57. However, the value of M tends to increase with x/X for all values of X, and the scatter of M for all X increases with x/X. ‘To apply equation 6 ¢ must be assigned a value. No particle-size information is available for the platinum tailings in question. On the basis of the limited particle-size data available for tailings from ores of high specific gravity® an initial value of 4.0 for c was selected for the platinum tailings, Further, 8 was assumed to be equal to y (2.230 from Table 1). According to Rana and co-workers,’ this is a reasonable approximation for Froude numbers less than unity. This is likely to apply to che relatively tranquil flow of viscous tailings ABsFig. 4 Particle sorting relationships for platinum tailings data (data points after Blight and Bentel") slurry, The relationship obtained using equation 6 is plotted in Fig. 4, Although itis a far better fit to the observed trend of the data chan a single mean M value, it is a poor fit to the widely scattered data. The effect of varying the value of cis to scale the relationship vertically. Curves for ¢ values of 2.0 and 8.0, with B = 2.230, are also shown in Fig. 4, and these roughly bound the observed data, The lower bound for f is about 0.8). Selecting a value of 4.0 for cand 1.784 for B gives a slightly better fit to the observed data, ‘The lower i value raises the curve and shifts its peak to the right. ‘The wide scatter in the data plotted in Fig. 4 makes modelling difficult. It may well be that particle sorting is 2 function both of the geometry of deposition and the proper~ ties of the tailings. The data for each particular value of X display a similar trend to that given by equation 6, but there are big differences between cach set of data and no consistent variation with X is apparent. Obviously, particle sorting will bbe affected by the initial solids concentration of the cailings, its particle-size distribution and the specific gravity of the particles. However, no detailed information on these proper~ ties is available. Comparison for coal-mine tailings data ‘The Aberdare data are reproduced in Fig. 5. The mean value of M for all values of x/X equal to 0.413 is clearly a poor representation of the variation of D,|Dy with x/X. The value of M increases with x/X, peaks and then drops gradually. In applying equation 6 the measured value for c of 2.50 was used. Again, 2 was taken to be equal to y (1.559 from Table 1). ‘The relationship obtained from equation 6 is plotted in Fig. 5 Although the theoretical relationship peaks later than the observed data, itis in reasonable agreement with the data, ‘A ypical particle-size distribution curve for the overall ATG Fig. 5 Particle sorting relationships for Aberdare coal tailings data Gay sit Send 0 Ey ° aor oes m ‘ am Fig. 6 ‘Typical particle-size distribution curve for Aberdare coal tailings Aberdare ccal tailings is presented as Fig. 6. Values for the specific gravity, G,, of the representative Dag size particles at various points down the coal tailings profile of the main dam at Aberdare were measured and are plotted as a function of a/X in Fig. 7, Samples for specific gravity testing were obtained by sieving. Material retained on the sieve that included the Dsy size was used to determine G,. This pro- cedure was necessary because of the large difference in G, for the mineral matter (2.75) and coal (1.30) constituents of the tailings. This results in a significant variation of G, with particle size, The G, value of the overall tailings was estimated to be 1.47 on the basis of the proportion of ash present. Over the proximal half of the profile mineral matter was dominant, whereas over the remainder coal was dominant. The value of G, exhibited no sudden transition because the coal in the tailings was incompletely liberated. Attempts were made to quantify the effect of G, on particle sorting, but no logical, statistically significant connexion between G, and the observed particle sorting could be delineated within the context of the river transport approach. It may be that the scatter introduced by discrete sampling, from the delta accounts for the majority of the observed scatter. It may also be the case that quantification of the effects of all of the variables involved would require a much more sophisticated approach than the river transport30 1 Mineral matter Coal dominant ‘dominant 28 Gs x x Fig. 7 Variation of G, for Aberdare coal tailings with x/X approach. However, if the Blight and Bentel approach is considered to give a first approximation to particle sorting, the river transport approach represents a much improved second approximation. It was found by Blight and co-workers* that non-dimen- sional profile curves may be reasonably well predicted from small-scale laboratory flume testing. The present authors have carried out such testing on coal tailings and have achieved encouraging results. Laboratory testing, however, does not shed any light on the more difficult aspect of particle sorting. Conclusions Application of the river transport approach to modelling the subaerial deposition of mine tailings slurry leads to improved predictions, by comparison with the empirical approach of Blight and Bentel,' for both a viscous, heavy-mineral (platinum) tailings and for an aqueous, light-mineral (coal) tailings. It provides a slightly better match of observed delta profiles for the two tailings types and a far better represen tation of observed hydraulic sorting down a tailings profile. ‘The improved predictions of mine tailings delta profiles and hydraulic sorting afforded by the river transport approach enable the storage capacity of a given tailings dam to be more accurately predicted and provide a better indication of the engineering properties of the tailings at different points down a tailings delta, Information on engineering properties is necessary for successful rehabilitation or reprocessing of disused tailings deposits. To apply either approach to a particular type of mine tailings data must be gathered from an existing delta formed from the same tailings. The required data include the shape of the profile and the variation of particle size down the profile. From this information values for the parameters n and M in the Blight and Bentel approach and y and f in the river transport approach may be fitted. By use of these values the profile and hydraulic sorting of other deltas that are formed from the same tailings under similar conditions may be predicted. The application of these approaches to a range of geometries and tailings properties will provide greater con- fidence in their appropriate use for prediction purposes. Further improvements may be possible on the basis of a more complete and detailed knowledge of particular situations, Symbols 1 + () © DylDr Cy Drag coefficient D Sediment particle size Dy Dyyatx = 0 Day Size through which 50% of material passes D, Dg of sediment at distance x down profile Dy sp of overal tailings G, Specific gravity M_—Non-dimensional constant of proportionality for particle sorting, characteristic of given tailings nm Constant defining profile for given mine tailings at particular initial solids concentration Re Reynolds number Slope of profile at x = 0 Slope at distance x down profile Distance down profile measured from its highest point X Overall length of profile from x = 0 to pool at end of profile 2 Height of sediment, measured above level of pool at end of profile, at distance x from highest point of profile Z Maximum height of sediment (at x = 0) Greek a Positive constant defining particle sorting for particular 8 —Non-dimensional, positive constant defining particle sorting for particular river; given by aX’ y Non-dimensional, positive constant defining profile for particular river; given by 2X 8 Positive constant defining slope for particular References 1. Blight G. B. and Bentel G. M. ‘The behaviour of mine tailings during hydraulic deposition, JUS, Afr. et. Min. Metall, 83, April 1983, 73-86. 2, Graf W. H. Hydraulics of sediment transport (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1971), 544 p. 3, Shulits S. Rational equation of river-bed profile. Trans. Am. geophys. Union, 2, 1941, 622-30. 4. Krumbein W.C. Sediments and exponential curves. J. Geol. 45, 1937, 577-601 5, Sternberg H. Untersuchungen uber das Lingen- und Querprofil sgeschiebefihrender Flisse. Zeitchrife Bausvesen, 1875, 5, Vick 8. G. Planning, design and analysis of tailings dams (New ‘York, etc: Wiley, 1983), 384 p. 7. RanaS. A. Simons D. B, and Mahmood K. Analysis of sediment sorting in alluvial channels. J. Hydraul. Div. Am, Soc. civ. Engrs, 99, 1973, 1967-80. 8. Blight G. E. Thomson RR. and Vorster K. Profiles of hhydraulic-il tailings beaches, and seepage through hydraulically sorted tailings. JUS. Afr. Inst. Min. Merall, 85, May 1985, 157-61 Authors D. J. Williams, who holds BE. and Ph.D. degrees, worked for geotechnical and mining consultants Golder Associates Pry., Ltd., in Australia before joining the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia in 1983. He is currently a senior lecturer in geomechanics at the University of Queensland and since 1986 has had a strong interest in researching the engineering behaviour of mine tailings deposited subscrialy as share. P. H. Morris, who holds « BLE. degree, worked in the construction industry in Australia before joining the University of Queensland as a research student in 1986, He is currently a senior research officer in ‘geomechianics at the University of Queensland and has spent the last three years pursuing « Ph.D. on the engineering behaviour of coal- ‘mine tilings deposited subaerially a a slurry. AqT