Tailing is the product discharged from the mining production, which has the least useful components and has been stored in the tailing pond for a long time. It not only occupies a large amount of land used for agriculture or forestry but also makes the local land resource unbalanced.
There are lots of toxic substances of the tailing, the major sources of which are the lots of agents added to the flotation process and some metal elements of the ore, such as cyanide, black powder, copper ions, and so on. They permeate soil, air, and water, which will do harm to human beings, livestock, fish, and farmland.
Even the tailing is directly discharged into nature by some small ore refineries. For example, in Shanxi province, there is an ore finery with dozens of small iron ore mines. Only one tenth of its tailing has been discharged into the tailing pond while the other tailing is directly discharged into the river and forest around here. It may severely worsen the living or production conditions around here.
According to some foreign statistics, it needs a large amount of investment for the tailing pond construction, which accounts for 5%-40% of the total cost of the whole mineral processing line. Besides, it takes much cost to maintain the tailing pond. With the constant increase of the amount of tailing, the height of the tailing pond will be increased. Thus, there will be more hidden danger.
Due to such severe danger coming from the tailing, it is very important to process the tailing. Recently, in our country, there has already been the tailing dry process, which can decrease the moisture of the tailing with times of dehydration. Then it can store it in the tailing pond, which can efficiently decrease the harm to environment by the lot of accumulation of tailing with too much moisture.
