Swedish mining company LKAB plans to build a 50-hectare industrial centre that will use fossil-free processes to recycle tailings from LKAB’s iron ore production into phosphorus products and rare earth elements.
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Swedish mining company LKAB plans to build a 50-hectare industrial centre that will use fossil-free processes to recycle tailings from LKAB’s iron ore production into phosphorus products and rare earth elements.
The planned LKAB site will host the company’s “ReeMAP” tailings recycling project, with a pre-study scheduled for completion in 2021 and full production to start in 2027. Locations being considered include Luleå, Skellefteå and Helsingborg.
The site will feature an apatite plant that will use a flotation process to produce a pure apatite concentrate from the tailings sand. LKAB is currently developing the complex hydro processes planned for the ReeMap project, in a lab setting and in bench-scale tests.
The site will also feature a railway line and port access, as the company plans to ship as much as 1 million tonnes a year of diverse products including hydrogen, phosphate fertiliser, rare earth elements, and gypsum and fluorine products.
Leif Boström, senior vice president for LKAB’s Business Area Special Products, noted that the planned investment would “amount to several billion Swedish kronor and create hundreds of jobs”.
Ibrahim Baylan, Sweden’s Minister for Business, Industry and Innovation, said of the development:
“LKAB continues to develop Sweden’s strengths as an innovative nation. ReeMAP is an important initiative to utilise today’s mine waste, leading to increased circularity and contributing to the green transition with both phosphorus and rare earth elements,” said Baylan.
“We will need up to 50 hectares to accommodate our facilities,” said ReeMAP’s project manager Ulrika Håkansson.
“A railway line and port access are also important, since we plan to ship as much as a million tonnes of product a year. Production, especially hydrogen production, will be energy intensive. We are now looking at all of these requirements and conditions for possible localisation in Luleå, Skellefteå and Helsingborg.”
Effectively monitor your tailings storage facility with Decipher
Decipher’s Tailings solution is designed to provide you with key data and insights, enabling you to effectively monitor your TSF and your environmental obligations and compliance. Our solution can be securely accessed by industry, regulators, designers and operators involved in the management of TSFs.
Decipher offers a comprehensive and functionally rich solution which combines regulatory (Compliance Management Software), mining waste management, stakeholder engagement, environmental monitoring, and environmental management system (EMS) tools to assist with tailings management:
View real-time data and receive exceedance alerts
Monitor land movement with remote sensing and InSAR datasets
Visualise real-time LiDAR data with insights into dam movement
Securely store and access all of your tailings data in the one place
Upload and reference key documentation
Visualise facilities across multiple sites in a single screen on a geospatial map
Monitor your facilities with InSAR, LiDAR, DEM and more
Capture a wide range of monitoring data and indicators su
ch as surface and groundwater, decant pond water levels and quality, and embankment conditions
Capture and track obligations and conditions around your licence to operate to manage your key risks and actions
Action and task delegation for data collection with reminders
Maintain and track environmental monitoring compliance limits and exceedances
Manage and engage with all of your stakeholders with one central repository
Convert your engagements into actionable outcomes
Forecast, plan and track your sites activities using IBM’s Weather data
Create corporate report templates and meet requests for data provision from industry groups such as ICMM, Global Tailings Portal, PRI and UNEP
Integration capability with third party systems or public portals such as the Global Tailings Portal
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Want to find out more about tailings storage monitoring?
Find out about the available solutions to help implement the Global Standard on Tailings Management in this FREE guide
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