The impacts of high salinity and polymer properties on dewatering and structural characteristics of flocculated high-solids tailings

In seeking to better understand the inline flocculation technique for enhanced water recovery from concentrated fine-particle suspensions, polymers of different molecular weight (MW) and chemistry were used to treat a synthetic tailings slurry in a low-shear mixer for continuous flocculation under controlled conditions. The effects of dissolved salts in the slurry and polymer solution make-up water on dewatering performance were evaluated for conventional acrylamide/acrylate copolymers (BASF Magnafloc (R) products) and an alternative functional chemistry polymer (BASF Rheomax (R) DR 1050). The properties of the separated liquid and solid phases were examined to understand the impacts of salinity and polymer type on the formation of rapidly dewatering flocculated material. Higher concentrations of NaCl (0.006-0.6 M) and CaCl2 (0.006-0.06 M) salts in the unflocculated slurries formed larger coagulated structures, with focussed beam reflectance measurement (FBRM) showing greater pre-aggregation for the divalent salt. NaCl slurries show edge-to-edge (EE) and edge-to-face (EF) inter-particle associations that are open and easily disrupted while more compact face-to-face (FF) contacts are observed in CaCl2 slurries. For concentrated NaCl slurries, the dosing of medium-to-high MW polymers is generally preferred to maximise net water recovery, with the implication being that bridging mechanisms are still at play in high solids applications. In calcium-enriched slurries, the lower MW conventional copolymer gave comparatively better water returns than the other polymers when applied under low shear conditions, highlighting quite distinct aggregation processes compared to low solids flocculation. These results provide insight on the fundamental complexity of the ionic strength dependence of high solids-high dosage tailings flocculation, towards informing reagent polymer dosing and offering greater flexibility for end-of-pipe dewatering schemes.