Resource Sustainability in Mining Operations Track
Track Focus
Mining operations involves several phases such as exploration, extraction, processing, and transporting minerals and metals to the beneficiaries such as industrial factories. These operations require specialized practices to ensure efficiency, safety and environmental responsibility. With the rapid industrial expansion of the mining sector, there is an urgent need for innovative solutions that minimize natural resources utilization and environmental impact.
This track focuses on developing innovative solutions that enhance water efficiency across different phases of mining, whether by improving operational processes or adopting alternative sources. It also opens the door for participants to design new solutions for reusing metals and minerals from mining and electronic waste.
Potential outcomes include reducing the volume of waste, decreasing reliance on raw natural resources, and advancing the concept of a circular economy in the mining sector.
The contribution here goes beyond technical innovation, it is a commitment to a broader vision that seeks to achieve balance between industrial progress and environmental preservation.
Challenges
Challenge 1: Circular Mining: Transforming Waste into Sustainable Resources
Mining operations often produce significant amounts of waste as a by-product, creating an untapped opportunity to recover valuable elements, through recycling, re-use, or repurpose of these materials into commercially viable products. Such products can serve the mining sector itself or other industries, generating economic value while reducing the environmental impact and advancing circular economy objectives.
This challenge requires proposing a solution to transform a costly mining waste stream into a valuable product that enhances resource efficiency, reduces environmental impact and increases economic value.
Solution Pathways:
Phosphogypsum
An industrial waste by-product generated during the processing of phosphate rock into phosphoric acid, a key step in manufacturing phosphate fertilizers.
Overburden of Soil and Rocks
Mining generates large volumes of overburden soil and rock which are removed to access minerals. Overburden poses environmental risks like land degradation and dust pollution.
Challenge Partners
Challenge 2: Water Efficiency in Mining Operations and Responsible Water Management
Mining operations consume vast amounts of water during its various stages such as ore processing, crushing, grinding, mineral separation, and tailings management. Water is used to suppress dust, transport and separate minerals, cool equipment, and manage leftover waste (tailings). This heavy reliance makes water efficiency a critical challenge in water-scarce areas.
A significant opportunity is in Tailings ponds, where it hold substantial volumes of process water (i.e. any water that comes into contact with raw material, product, by-product or waste) that could be recovered to reduce the sector's reliance on freshwater resources.
Another opportunity lies in dry processing, which emphasizes approaches that eliminate the need for water in mineral extraction and treatment. By reducing dependence on water-intensive methods, dry processing can significantly lower freshwater use, limit the generation of wet tailings, and reduce associated environmental and operational risks. Transitioning towards such methods enhances sustainability, and decreases costs linked to water treatment and management.
This Challenge requires solutions that either enhance water efficiency or enable mining without water dependence. Whether through advanced methods that reduce freshwater withdrawals, maximize reuse and recycling to achieve zero liquid discharge, or innovative dry processing that eliminates water use altogether, the aim is to significantly improve resource efficiency and sustainability. It is also important to consider that most mining complexes or sites are in remote areas with limited access to water and utilities, which makes innovative water management and dry alternatives even more critical.
Solution Pathways:
Mining with Dry Processes Without Depending on Water
Innovative approaches that eliminate reliance on water in mineral extraction and processing, reducing environmental risks from wet tailings and strengthening sustainability in water-scarce regions.
Advanced technologies to extract, purify, or reuse water from mining operations
Advanced technologies that enable the extraction, purification, and recycling of process water from mining operations, minimizing freshwater withdrawals and ensuring water is safely and efficiently reused across the value chain.
Challenge Partners