Challenges in Ensuring Stability Whilst Providing Environmental Compliance for Existing TSFs
Authors: Edoardo Zannoni1, Vernita Govender1, and Morne Germishuys1
Conference: GeoAmericas 2024
Date: April 28-May 1, 2024
1 Knight Piésold, Johannesburg, South Africa
ABSTRACT
The stringent requirements for tailings storage facilities (TSF) following the publishing of the Global Industry Standards for Tailings Management (GISTM) have required in depth stability supported by advance testing and modelling, where in the presence of a hazardous tailings facility would require knowledge of the barrier system. Often a buttress is required to increase the factor of safety from the one originally designed, complying with stability as well as environmental requirements, and most importantly without triggering any failure during construction. When the tailings and the buttress material classifies as waste, it adds one more level of complexity which needs to be accounted in the stability as well as in the barrier design system, especially when the materials requires different barriers system. The paper aim to present a project where the facility requires a buttress as the original design in the early 2000s was not acceptable in today’s requirements. The stability pivot over a multi-layered barrier system (which does not allow Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion) and the different waste classification between the tailings and the buttress material, requiring different barrier requirements, yet to all be tailored in a constructible solution, without affecting the stability of the TSF.
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