As one of the world's leading specialty chemical companies, Clariant contributes to value creation with innovative and sustainable solutions for customers from many industries.

This includes the mining industry, where Clariant creates chemical solutions as part of its work to help achieve a future with less tailings dams.

Through its Tailings Management Program (TMP) and global Competence Centre for Tailings Treatment (CCTT) in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, Clariant is seeking to transform the way the industry deals with mining waste.

Solutions in partnership

Clariant's TMP is comprised of four technology platforms: flotation, magnetic separation, dewatering and rheology modification to reduce the volume of tailings and tap into the value they still hold. Head of Clariant's CCTT, Livia Faustino also spoke of a fifth platform ‘discover', which embodies the company's passion for innovation. Launched in September 2021, the CCTT is staffed by a dedicated team of experts focused on developing new chemical solutions for tailings management and beneficiation. Their goal is to co-create disruptive chemical solutions in partnership with research institutes, start-ups, and others whose research focuses on the same purpose.

The CCTT is distinguished by its cross-functionality, where - in collaboration with the customer - the expertise of chemists, technicians, mineral processing engineers, metallurgists and others is combined with new technologies to evaluate and enhance the performance of Clariant's chemical tailings solutions for the mining industry. In addition, solutions are channeled via inputs from field and sales personnel creating a dynamic network of innovation that can be swiftly scaled up.

Brazil is one of the key global hubs for mining R&D, making it the ideal base from where the CCTT can work in close contact with key industry players active in the region, as well as in cooperation with Clariant teams who are locally based across five continents. Following several workshops with major mining companies, Clariant has successfully developed an ongoing pipeline of partnership projects exceeding 30 in number.

Quantifiable success

One example is Clariant's project with Canadian company, Largo Inc., around the direct flotation of ilmenite from vanadium tailings to produce saleable grade titanium ore, for which a specific collector was developed. The success of this initiative has seen the partnership become an ongoing one, with continuous improvement of the operation and the development of new projects on tailings valorization is now being targeted.

Meanwhile, Clariant's work alongside Brazilian iron ore company, Samarco, also merits mention. The objective here is to reduce the disposal of slime in a mining pit, adding a percentage of slime to the flotation tailings filtered in a filtration plant and minimizing the impact over its productivity. As a result of the tests, Samarco is now able to enhance its filtering capacity of the slimes with its flotation tailings and dry stacking them. These improvements will help increase the useful life of the slime disposal structures, potentially extending the life of mine.

Four-dimensional strategy

Clariant pursues a four-dimensional ‘purpose-led strategy' in all its endeavors, which Livia Faustino described as having the following essential pillars: customer focus, innovative chemistry, leading in sustainability and people engagement. Acting as the company's guiding lights, together, these combine to further the goal of creating greater chemistry between people and planet; connecting people through collaborative science.

And with Clariant uniquely able to offer its customers laboratory equipment and conditions that reflect real-world tailings plant infrastructure, solutions can be customized and optimized with pinpoint accuracy.

With its well-resourced CCTT asset and multi-disciplined team of experts, Clariant can also draw on a broad range of technologies and know-how to create tailings treatment solutions and deliver outcomes that go beyond water management to encompass the mineral resources themselves. This is inspired by a mission to help its customers repurpose tailings for the greater good of the planet and its people, not to mention the mining company's profits. 

Inspiring transformation

While acknowledging the very painful Brumadinho-informed stimulus that served as the catalyst for change, Livia Faustino welcomes the increased attention now being paid to tailings management by the mining industry. The strategic and operational landscape continues to be transformed now that the risks associated with Tailings Storage Facilities (TSFs) have been brought into sharp focus, with tailings increasingly valorized and viewed as an under-exploited asset.

The CCTT head points to the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management (GISTM) and the International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM)-led Tailings Reduction Roadmap as being at the heart of this transformation. 

Broadly, the GISTM acts to set a global benchmark for achieving social, environmental, and technical outcomes for tailings management. It is informed by an integrated approach that seeks to enhance TSF safety and prevent catastrophic failures.  The Tailings Reduction Roadmap, meanwhile, is proving its worth in its provision of strategic directions on how to accelerate the development and adoption of technologies capable of reducing tailings production. 

Together, these two have already served to generate an exponential growth in tailings treatment technology and can count on Clariant as a key specialty chemicals partner to continue providing the solutions necessary to see tailings management underpinned by the principles behind sustainable development.

When considering tailings reduction, Livia Faustino emphasized that increasing demand for critical minerals coupled with ever lower ore grades will inevitably and unavoidably result in higher tailings volumes given the higher number of processing steps required to achieve good concentrate grade. Therefore, to create the change society is demanding, the focus for mining companies must be on reprocessing and repurposing tailings, thereby contributing to the pursuit of an industry synonymous with circularity. The head of Clariant's CCTT added, however, this will require an additional uplift in investment in the requisite technology and infrastructure.

Livia Faustino posited that "the tailings business needs technology to make it feasible to obtain higher aggregate value products that must also represent a bigger portion of the generated tailings, making it possible to efficiently reduce volumes."

The shift in mindset necessary to attach value to tailings at scale will be assisted by the inherent truth that here is a readily accessible resource at scale that has already been mined and ground, so giving rise to significant savings. 

She did not downplay the scale of the challenge and noted that she and her team are not short of motivation for the task at hand. Clariant will continue to invest in its Tailings Management Program and work with the mining industry to provide new and innovative scientific circularity-inspired solutions to the global tailings conundrum. She anticipates a perception shift where the industry can visualize tailings as a mineral deposit capable of being transformed into ore.