Ideally, solutions to mine waste management should require no monitoring and maintenance in perpetuity so that future users of the land do not need to be concerned about degradation of environmental quality. For water quality, mixing of acid generating and acid consuming wastes may be able to achieve this goal under some conditions by yielding stable predictable drainage quality.
The general requirement is that the potentially acid generating components of the mixture should not become acidic beyond the mineral grain scale thereby preventing accelerated leaching due to depressed pH. Successful mixing at the scale of mine operations requires consideration of the intimacy of mixing which depends mainly on the reactivity of the materials.
This presentation provides a brief overview of the theoretical basis for waste rock blending and a discussion of the opportunities and limits to its application.
