How entrepreneurs are turning mining waste into useable metals

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In the middle of the night in August 2014, the Mount Polley Mine Dam in British Columbia failed, spilling an estimated 25 million cubic meters of tailings and wastewater from an open pit copper and gold mine onto the valley below. The damage to the environment and everyone who lived nearby or visited the area was, by some measures, incalculable.

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But it wasn’t the first time that a mine’s tailings dam had failed — nor would it be the last. Such disasters highlight a key issue hanging over the mining sector: where to store waste from mines, whether in tailings dams or piles on the ground.

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As efforts to limit climate change lead to more and more investment in electrification, which adds exponential new demand for copper, nickel and many other conductive metals, the environmental track record of mining companies is facing heightened scrutiny from investors and the world.

In response, a wave of entrepreneurs — sometimes supported by larger mining companies — are studying waste from old mining operations and discovering that what was waste in years past may not be waste anymore and indeed, may be valuable.

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“We are seeing tailings being evaluated more and more for metals extraction,” said Kiril Mugerman, chief executive of Boucherville, Que.-based Geomega Resources Inc., which is focused on recycling. “It’s already crushed and ground up, so it’s easy to work with, and so more and more processes will be evaluated to extract material from mining tailings.”

The company announced earlier this year that mining giant Rio Tinto PLC, the Quebec government and the federal government’s Sustainable Development Technology Canada would invest $4 million in Geomaga’s Innord Inc. subsidiary to refine a metal extraction process from bauxite waste. The rock is the world’s main source of aluminum, but is also often laden with iron ore and other metals. Mostly mined for aluminum alone, any other metals contained in bauxite historically have been treated as waste — called residues or red mud — and set aside, sometimes in piles.

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Mugerman estimates that 150 million tonnes of bauxite residues are produced annually around the world, and that on average, there’s $80 to $120 worth of metal in every tonne.

In the past, Mugerman said research into bauxite waste may have focused on how to grow vegetation in it, or how to store it safely.

“A lot of the money went into how can we make sure it doesn’t look bad, but in terms of actually creating value and giving value to all the metals, there’s very, very little work,” he said. “It’s very, very complex, but we think there’s a solution.”

Mugerman’s move towards recycling was also born out of necessity. Separately from the bauxite residue research, Geomega is building a demonstration plant in Quebec where it hopes to recycle rare earths magnets. It created that project as a means to generate enough revenue to build a rare earths mine one day, which typically involves higher upfront capital costs than a recycling facility.

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“We felt like it was an easier way to demonstrate that our technology can be scaled up because in the mining space, you need cash flow,” he said.

Geomega isn’t the only company zeroing in on rare earths recycling. In Kingston Ont., Cyclic Materials Inc. was born when Ahmad Ghahreman, a professor at Queens’ University’s mining department, struck on the recycling idea and took a leave of absence to start the company.

Ghahreman said that though most rare earths magnets end up in landfills, a small percentage are recycled. But he said the process involves burning products to separate out the metals, an inefficient method that can release its own emissions, counteracting any of the hoped-for environmental benefits of recycling.