The case is located in a mining zone of Chile, where the main processing mineral is copper ore. The traditional treatment method requires excavating a plurality of reservoirs to store the mine water. The ore is carried out by means of natural exposure and requires water source for beneficiation operations. Therefore, it consumes great deal of time and also needs large space to handle big amount of copper ore. The lack of local water resources and insufficient storage capacity have seriously affected the mining environment and treatment efficiency. The separated water is pumped into the reservoir for further treatment and subsequent recycling. After filling the geotextile tube (ACETube®) with copper sludge, the tube is placed for one month for gravity dewatering and exposure. The water content of the sludge can be promptly reduced to below 20%, which is beneficial to the subsequent mineral refining. This project used geotextile tubes to treat copper sludge for 4 to 5 months and it successfully reduced the amount of time required for processing the tailing compared to traditional methods. Since the drained clean water can be recycled in a short period of time, the demand for new tailings dams is minimized, hence the cost of water recycling can be effectively decreased. Besides, the minerals contained in the tailing are of high economic values and can be effectively retrieved from geotextile tube dewatering solution, turning waste mine water into commercial commodity.
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