Co-Disposal of Coal Mine Tailings and Coarse Reject: A Promising New Technique

The washing of Australian black coal produces coarse grained waste or coarse reject, and fine grained waste or tailings. Coarse reject is easily handled and is conventionally dumped in piles where it ravels at its angle of repose. Tailings, on the other hand, are difficult to handle and have conventionally been kept separate from the coarse reject and disposed of separately. Conventionally, thickened tailings are pumped as aqueous slurry to a storage, where they remain in the form of a ”wet“ deposit. The technique of co-disposal by the combined pumping of the tailings and coarse reject is emerging as the favoured approach.