The deposition of paste tailings on surface certainly offers many potential advantages to conventional deposition, such as reduced reliance of dams, increased water recycling within an operation, reduction in volume of tailings, and lower rates of seepage. The disadvantages include increased risk of acid generation, the challenges of managing the evolving deposition geometry, and cost. This paper presents research on both deposition rheology and evaporation rates of gold paste tailings in a cyclic deposition scheme. Modeling of desiccation of multilayer tailings deposits is presented. Modeling of non-Newtonian flow of successive deposits of tailings in a flume is also presented. In light of the results, the authors discuss a framework whereby tailings mangers can reduce dewatering costs by relying on self-weight consolidation and evaporation to maximize stack deposition angles.
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