This paper presents a case study on the design, construction and operation ofa major upgrade of the tailings storage facilities at Sar Cheshmeh mine, Iran.Sar Cheshmeh is the oldest of the National Iranian Copper IndustriesCompany (NICICO) copper mines in Iran. It is located in Kerman provincein southern central Iran at an elevation of 2,700 m. It is a world class orebody. The current production rate is a nominal 60,000 t/day (22 Mtpa),scheduled to increase to 90,000 t/day (33 Mtpa) and future planningenvisages 137,000 t/day (50 Mtpa). Planning was for storage of an extra 900million tonnes of tailings.The mine is located in a semi-arid environment with average annualrainfall of 260 mm/yr and evaporation of 2,800 mm/yr. Make-up watersupply comes from an alluvial borefield over 30 km from the mine.Tailings and water recovery and management practices at the tailingsdam, which had been acceptable at the early, low mine throughputs, wereclearly inadequate for the expansions and larger throughput. Also themine was now competing for water with increased local demand fromagriculture consumers.After extensive evaluation of alternatives in around year 2000, thedecision was taken to improve the water recovery by utilization of pastethickeners on the underflow from the existing conventional thickeners, andalso by improving the efficiency of the existing tailings decant recoverysystem. To provide ongoing tailings storage (for Phase 2 at 90,000 t/day), itwas also necessary to raise the existing dam. The opportunity was taken tominimize the height of this raise by employing down-valley discharge ofpaste-thickened tailings (Williams, 2000).Construction of the improvements to the system has been completedand the upgraded tailings management system is in its early years ofoperation with satisfactory outcomes. In this article the variouscomponents of the system are described and outcomes are discussed.
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