Mine waste reuse and reprocessing: an important step for the implementation of the circular economy in Europe
Authors: Bodénan Françoise , Ménard Yannick , d'Hugues Patrick 
Published: March 2021

&lt;p&gt;Whereas there are growing needs for mineral resources (metals for the energy and digital transitions&lt;br&gt;and construction materials), the mining industry must produce them from poorer, more&lt;br&gt;heterogeneous and more complex deposits. Therefore, volumes of mine waste produced (including&lt;br&gt;tailings) are also increasing and add up to waste from mining legacy. For example in Europe (x27): 732&lt;br&gt;Mtons of extractive waste are generated per year and more than 1.2 Btons of legacy waste are stored&lt;br&gt;all over the European territory. The localisation (and potential hazards) are well known and covered&lt;br&gt;by the inventories carried out in EU countries under the Mining Waste Directive.&lt;br&gt;At the same time, Europe is implementing the circular economy approach and put a lot of emphasis&lt;br&gt;on the resource efficiency concept. In this context, reprocessing operation to recover both metals and&lt;br&gt;mineral fraction is studied with the objective of combing waste management (reducing final waste&lt;br&gt;storage and long-term impact) and material production from secondary resources.&lt;br&gt;Numerous industrial experiences of reprocessing of mine waste and tailings exist all over the world to&lt;br&gt;recover metals such as copper, gold or critical raw materials - CRM They concern mainly active mine&lt;br&gt;where both primary and secondary resources are considered in profitable operations; for example in&lt;br&gt;Chile, South Africa, Australia. Mineral fraction recovery is often not considered which still leaves the&lt;br&gt;industry with a high volume of residual minerals to store and manage.&lt;br&gt;In addition, legacy mining waste are potentially available for reprocessing. In this case, numerous&lt;br&gt;mining liabilities issues need to be managed. Some of the European legacy mining waste have residual&lt;br&gt;valuable metals that could be recovered but some of them have very low metal contents. In Europe,&lt;br&gt;classical rehabilitation operations &amp;#8211; usually at the charge of member states and local authorities &amp;#8211; is&lt;br&gt;the priority and concern the reduction of instabilities and impacts to the environment including heap&lt;br&gt;remodelling, covering and water management with long-term treatment. Completing this risk&lt;br&gt;management approach by a circular economy one is a very active R&amp;D subject in EU27.&lt;br&gt;This presentation will give an overview of EU research projects which tackled the legacy mining waste&lt;br&gt;challenge from inventory to process development. Several process flowsheets to recover metals were&lt;br&gt;designed and tested on several case studies with CRM &amp;#8211; REE, Co, W, Sb, etc. Initiatives to reuse mineral&lt;br&gt;fraction are also underway and should be ready for commercialisation in the coming years.&lt;br&gt;Resources efficiency concept and the circular economy implementation starts on mining sites. In order&lt;br&gt;to facilitate the implementation of this approach, the technical solutions will need to be included in&lt;br&gt;innovative global initiatives covering also legal (liability management), environmental (Life Cycle&lt;br&gt;Analysis approaches) and social (acceptance) questions.&lt;/p&gt;