The United States began to aim at mine tailings and strengthen the domestic supply of key minerals. In July this year, the Department of the Interior of the United States carried out a series of regulatory reforms, establishing a fast-track approval channel for tailings recovery projects, and also guiding the United States Geological Survey to map and count domestic tailings. The research team of the Colorado School of Mines released the latest results showing that 70 elements in American mining operations, except for platinum and palladium, can theoretically be obtained and meet domestic demand by improving recovery methods. Tailings, as the main solid waste in mineral resources development, have long faced the triple dilemma of storage land occupation, environmental pollution and resource waste. Driven by the dual forces of global green and low-carbon transformation and the shortage of key mineral resources, tailings have been upgraded from "industrial waste" to " secondary resources" with economic and ecological value. A quiet mining revolution has already begun.

The technological revolution is quietly driving the "value reconstruction" of tailings

Mining has created hundreds of millions of tons of tailings ponds around the world, fuelling public opposition to the industry and one of the reasons why it takes so long to build and commission new mines. Traditional mining was a very inefficient industry, with too many valuable minerals being discarded as waste due to a lack of technology to process lower-grade ore. A study paper published by the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany in 2020 stated that 6.5 billion tons of copper had been mined globally between 1910 and 2010, but 1 billion tons had never made it to market. The metals lying dormant in tailings ponds represent a potential treasure trove of huge size, waiting to be unlocked by innovative technologies. As traditional processing innovations combine with new technologies such as biotechnology and artificial intelligence, this is changing.

Tailings redevelopment brings benefits in both economic and environmental aspects. According to the calculation of GEP Research, the global tailings treatment scale exceeded 9 billion tons in 2025, with metal mine tailings accounting for 65%. As the ore grade declines, this quantity is still increasing. Rio Tinto has successfully separated key metals, such as extracting scandium and tellurium from the tailings of existing operations. Hudbay Minerals is assessing the potential for re - mining of tailings at the Flin Flon mine site in Manitoba, Canada. The mine closed in 2022, leaving behind nearly a century's worth of mineral - rich waste ore. Australia's Cobalt Blue Holdings has been collaborating on the Flin Flon project. The company has also signed an agreement with the Mount Isa City Council in Queensland to process pyrite tailings as a potential alternative source of sulfur after the town's copper smelter closes. India's Hindustan Zinc plans to invest $438 million to process 10 million tons of tailings annually at the Rampura Agucha mine, the world's largest zinc mine.

Many efforts in the field of tailings recovery are incremental developments. Glencore Technology has been steadily improving its ISAMill grinder to reduce grinding volume, save water, and minimize tailings waste. The company's Albion leaching process can increase copper recovery rates to over 99%, reduce operating costs by one - third, and develop complex ore bodies that traditional technologies cannot handle. The biotech innovation company Allonnia is pioneering more revolutionary approaches. Its D - Solve technology uses microorganisms to selectively extract impurities such as magnesium from concentrates. The company has just partnered with Eagle Nickel Mine in the United States to build an on - site facility that can increase nickel grades by 18% and reduce magnesium impurities by 40%.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become an umbrella term for all innovative technologies.Large companies such as Rio Tinto and BHP are already using artificial intelligence in automated transport systems and predict maintenance downtime instead of reacting passively to equipment failure. BHP combines AI with "digital twin" technology to create a GenAI model that can develop ore blasting and blending strategies and supports semi-automatic ball mill model predictive control. The Freeport-McMoRan copper producer in the United States is working with the consultancy McKinsey to use artificial intelligence to increase the output of its North American mines. The artificial intelligence trial at the Bagdad mine in Arizona increased copper production by 5-10%. As it is promoted throughout its overall business in the United States, the technology is expected to increase US copper production by 90,000 tons per year. Building a new processing plant with the same production would take up to 8 to 10 years from planning to commissioning.

The industrial transformation from “ecological burden” to “climate asset”

The carbon credit market has grown tenfold over the past two years and McKinsey predicts it could be worth up to $1.2 trillion by 2050. A report titled "Beyond Mining: Turning Tailings into a Multibillion-Dollar Net-Zero Opportunity", co-authored by Arca Climate Technologies, a non-profit climate consultancy, and Will McManus, a former mining journalist for the Financial Times, has broken the traditional narrative of tailings as a "cost center" and offers a disruptive perspective on the development of tailings from a climate change perspective, known as "carbon mineralization". This represents a transformative business opportunity and a new source of revenue.

Triple value recognition of the reconstruction of mine waste.The report systematically demonstrates for the first time that magnesium-iron/ultra-magnesium iron tailing produced by the mining of nickel, diamonds, chromium and other minerals have natural chemical properties that can capture CO₂. The active elements in such rocks can react with CO₂ in the atmosphere to form stable magnesium carbonate crystals, which are "carbon storage carriers waiting to be activated". The global stock of tailings suitable for carbon mineralization materials is nearly 20 billion tons, which can theoretically store 4 billion tons of CO₂, more than 10 times the global annual carbon emissions. Unlike traditional carbon capture technologies that require the construction of expensive new facilities, mining companies already have the infrastructure (tailings ponds, transportation systems) and geological expertise to handle large volumes of materials, and can directly transform tailings facilities into "carbon mining chemical plants". The advantage of this "in-place conversion" makes the cost of carbon removal 30%-50% lower than other technologies. The report calculates that the potential value of carbon credits from only the existing tailings is already $1.3 trillion, and could increase to $5.2 trillion if historical alkaline waste is included.

Arca model and market two-way breakthrough commercial practice.Arca is a Canadian company engaged in mining carbon capture and carbon sequestration research and development application, which has created a feasible technical path for carbon conversion of tailing. The first is the asset leasing model, paying a tailing reservoir use fee to mining enterprises, independently operating carbon mineralization projects and exclusively enjoying carbon credit benefits; the second is the joint venture model, establishing a joint venture with large mining enterprises, where mining enterprises provide tailing resources and venues, Arca outputs technology, and the profit is divided 4:6, this model has been implemented in Talon Metals' US nickel mine project; the third is the technology licensing model, selling technology packages and monitoring systems to mining enterprises, and charging 15%-20% of the carbon credit benefit as a licensing fee. At present, Arca has signed a carbon credit pre-purchase agreement with technology enterprises such as Microsoft and Google, with a unit price of about 80-120 US dollars/ton of CO₂, which is 40% more expensive than traditional forestry carbon sinks. Because tailing carbon storage has the risk-free advantages of permanence and no reverse, policy subsidies have shortened the payback period of the project from 8 years to 3-4 years.

The "climate identity" of the mining industry is being reshaped.The report, which compares the pollution case of Ite Bay in Peru (a copper mine that emitted 785 million tons of tailings in 35 years, destroying the fishing ecology), points out that carbon mineralization technology transforms tailings from a "pollution source" into an "environmental asset", fundamentally addressing the environmental concerns of communities and regulation. The pilot of Arca in Chile's copper mine shows that after adopting its technology, the mine's time to obtain community environmental permits was shortened from 18 months to 6 months. Data in the report shows that mining companies with carbon mineralization capabilities are valued 25% - 30% higher than traditional mining companies.Poseidon Nickel, which cooperates with Arca, saw its stock price rise by 40% after the agreement was announced, and it received a preferential purchase order from new energy vehicle companies. Tailings carbon mineralization solves two major transformation pain points at the same time: on the one hand, it alleviates the shortage of strategic minerals by recovering elements such as lithium and cobalt from tailings (performed simultaneously with carbon mineralization); on the other hand, it provides "low-carbon metal" raw materials for the new energy industry chain. The report predicts that by 2030, 30% of the world's nickel and 20% of the cobalt will come from tailings recovery, and the carbon footprint of related metals will be reduced by more than 60%.

Mining giants have listed tailings as a strategic choice for resource growth

Freeport-McMoRan's "tailings leaching" new growth pole. Freeport-McMoRan's key growth pole is to bet big on leaching technology to extract copper from waste ore. The company is one of the earliest enterprises in the world to carry out large-scale wet metallurgy, and currently cooperates with Jetti Resources Company, and Jetti company's catalytic technology is applied to Freeport's El Abra copper mine in Chile and Bagdad mine in Arizona, USA. In 2023, Freeport-McMoRan's copper production increased by 144 million pounds through leaching technology innovation, and it increased to 214 million pounds in 2024, of which 50 million pounds were added in the fourth quarter alone. The company plans to achieve 300 million pounds of copper production per year through leaching technology by the end of 2025, and to reach 400 million pounds by the end of 2026, with a long-term goal of producing 800 million pounds of copper per year. The production cost of leaching copper will be one third lower than that of hard rock mines, and there is no need for smelters to process it. This allows the company to recover copper from a large number of waste rock piles at a lower cost, effectively offsetting the impact of declining ore grades and enhancing the company's competitiveness.

The Ultra-fine Grinding and Flotation Technologies of Ivanhoe Mines. Ivanhoe Mines' Kamoa-Kakula Copper Mine is one of the super-large copper mines with the highest grade globally. In 2023, the company carried out re-recovery tests on the tailings from the Phase I and Phase II concentrators. In the tailings recovery process, the ultra-fine grinding technology of grinding the tailings to less than 12 microns (80%) was adopted, followed by conventional flotation, thickening, and filtration processes. The preliminary test results show that even when the feed grade is less than 1%, about 65% of the copper in the tailings can still be recovered to produce copper concentrate containing about 40% copper. The tailings concentrator will also adopt traditional technologies, including high-intensity mills and Jameson flotation machines used in the flotation process, and expand the thickening capacity. Currently, DRA Global, the full-process service provider of this project, has carried out relevant techno-economic research on the construction and operation of the tailings re-recovery facilities, and the results show that the economic benefits are very promising.

Zijin Mining's Stagewise Ammonia-Cyanide Leaching and Mineral Processing Technology. Zijin Mining has researched and applied the low - reagent segmented ammonia - cyanide leaching and selective copper removal technology, which has solved the world - wide mineral processing and metallurgy problem of the high - sulfur and high - arsenic gold - copper ore in Tajikistan's Talas. Through more than 20 technological upgrades, the recovery rate of the Rosebel Gold Mine in Suriname has exceeded 95%. Zijin Mining has achieved the economic mining of gold ore with a grade of 0.15 grams per ton and copper ore with a grade of 0.1%. The "molybdenum floatability and separation + copper - sulfur bulk flotation and separation beneficiation technology" researched and applied by it has realized the clean and efficient recovery of copper, low - grade associated molybdenum and silver valuable metal resources in the Tibet Julong Copper Mine. The recovery rates of copper and molybdenum have reached 85% and 74% respectively, and the copper grade of the selected ore has decreased from 0.4% initially to 0.17%. Chen Jinghe, the chairman of Zijin Mining, put forward the "variable reserve theory", believing that the value of resources changes dynamically with metal prices, technical conditions and costs. Under the guidance of this theory, the available resources of the Zijinshan Gold Mine have increased from 5.45 tons to 318 tons.

Rio Tinto's Nuton Bioleaching Technology. The Nuton technology relies on naturally occurring microorganisms. After large-scale cultivation in a proprietary bioreactor, they are put into crushed ore piles to accelerate the oxidation process of primary sulfide ores. The heat generated by microbial oxidation dissolves copper into the leachate, which can ultimately be directly processed into cathode copper with a purity of 99.99%. This technology eliminates the beneficiation, smelting, and refining steps of traditional mining, enabling direct copper production at the mine site. It has more flexible scene adaptability: no large-scale smelting facilities are required, and it can be customized for deployment. It is suitable for the transformation of old mines, as well as the development of local small mines and the construction of green mines. The copper recovery rate of primary sulfide ores can reach up to 85%, far exceeding the 50%-70% of traditional processes. It can also extract copper from traditional "waste materials" such as waste rocks and tailings, extending the mine life. Compared with traditional processes, carbon emissions and water consumption are reduced by 40%-60% and 60%-80% respectively, which is in line with the green mine policy. The infrastructure cost and commissioning cycle (18 months) are much lower than those of traditional processes (18 years), and the operating cost is more stable. 70% of the world's copper resources are primary sulfide ores. The commercial application of the Nuton technology is expected to unlock this huge reserve. Rio Tinto has advanced project cooperation negotiations in North and South America. Currently, the Nuton technology is in the initial stage of commercialization, but it is disruptive in terms of resource utilization, environmental friendliness, and cost control. It is an important technological direction under the trend of "carbon reduction + local autonomy" in the global copper supply chain.

As a "by - product" of mining production, under the combined effects of policy drivers, resource shortages, technological breakthroughs, and market demands, tailings have transformed from a traditional "ecological burden" into a "valuable ore deposit" that mining giants are vying to layout. Especially against the backdrop of intensifying supply - demand contradictions in key minerals, a decline in ore grades year by year, fewer new mines being discovered, long development times for new mines, stricter ESG policies in various countries, and increasing operational difficulties and costs, the strategic value of tailings has become even more prominent, serving as a dual breakthrough point to address both resource shortages and environmental pressures.

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