Numerous mineral processing plants have been facing increasing challenges regarding fluid ultrafine-fine tailings disposal due to the high costs of dams heightening, difficulty in the water recovering for the process and operational safety. The generation of tailings has become a huge environmental liability, especially when storage occurs upstream of landfills. In the present work, the concept of using anionic copolymers synthesized from two different monomers, acrylamide and sodium acrylate was evaluated in order to improve the rheology properties of fluid ultrafine-fine mineral tailings of bauxite and copper from mining projects in the Amazon region of Brazil. The results revealed that the bauxite tailings (rich in kaolinite, 1:1 phyllosilicate, and absence of 2:1 phyllosilicates) has exclusively variable charge with Point of Zero Charge (PZC) = 3.2, while the copper tailings presents variable charge and permanent charge (PZC = 2.3). The permanent charge comes mainly from 2:1 phyllosilicates (biotite and chlorite). The best performance of the copolymer of medium molecular weight and anionic charge of 28 % used was for bauxite tailings, for which, tests carried out with variation of 2 % solids and 6 °C temperature – real seasonality of precipitation for the Oriental Brazilian Amazon (Pará State) – revealed an important effect on the particle agglomeration, indicating the need for continuous management of the dam along the year. So, it can be said that the best condition to promote the agglomeration and also recover a good volume of water for bauxite tailings using this flocculant is to use not much more than 300 g/t.

中文翻译：

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阴离子共聚物对两种亚马逊流体超细-细矿物尾矿（铝土矿和铜）的絮凝性能

由于大坝加高成本、难以回收水以进行工艺和作安全，许多矿物加工厂在流体超细尾矿处理方面面临着越来越大的挑战。尾矿的产生已成为一个巨大的环境责任，尤其是当储存在垃圾填埋场的上游时。在本工作中，评估了使用由两种不同的单体丙烯酰胺和丙烯酸钠合成的阴离子共聚物的概念，以改善巴西亚马逊地区采矿项目中铝土矿和铜的流体超细-细矿物尾矿的流变性能。结果显示，铝土矿尾矿（富含高岭石、1：1 层状硅酸盐，不存在 2：1 层状硅酸盐）具有零电荷点 （PZC） = 3.2 的完全可变电荷，而铜尾矿则呈现可变电荷和永久电荷 （PZC = 2.3）。永久电荷主要来自 2：1 的层状硅酸盐（黑云母和绿泥石）。中等分子量和 28% 阴离子电荷的共聚物用于铝土矿尾矿，为此，在 2% 固体变化和 6 °C 温度（巴西东部亚马逊（帕拉州）降水的实际季节性）下进行的测试显示，对颗粒团聚有重要影响，表明需要全年对大坝进行连续管理。因此，可以说，使用这种絮凝剂促进团聚并为铝土矿尾矿回收大量水的最佳条件是使用不超过 300 克/吨的水分。