Improving Tailings Deposition: A Drone and Satellite Survey Validation Framework for Enhanced Facility Management

December 16, 2024

To enable continued deposition at the Aitik Tailings Management Facility (TMF) during a period of remediation works since 2022, it was necessary to reconfigure the tailings deposition plan to divert the deposited tailings and surface water to a different area of the facility. The Aitik TMF, owned by Boliden AB, is a sidehill impoundment formed by a contiguous sequence of dams. An unusual feature of this facility is that all the perimeter dams are constructed at different elevations, such that the dams at the bottom of the original valley are at a lower elevation than those at the top of the original valley.

Historically this simplified tailings operations, but it added complexity when it was necessary to reconfigure the deposition arrangement for this period of remediation works. A temporary exclusion zone for deposition near the downstream dams had to be demarcated on the surface of the tailings impoundment via the construction of rockfill “piers” to redirect annual deposition of tailings (43 Mtpa) and water towards a newly constructed spillway located south of the previous spillway.

Deposition modeling was performed using Muk3D Tailings+ Software by MineBridge to simulate short- and long-term deposition with the construction of rockfill piers to assess the effect on shaping the TMF tailings surface and water contours towards a new sedimentation pond and spillway. Due to the complexity of the deposition modeling and sequencing of the deposition with construction of additional piers, the deposition modeling has been updated on an ongoing basis and calibrated against field monitoring data.

To assess the validity of the models, regular as-built drone (weekly) and satellite (monthly) surveys (including high resolution photographs) were recorded and compared with models processed by Muk3D Tailings+ simulations monthly. The implementation of a validation framework for tailings deposition operations through the integration of drone and satellite survey data has allowed Boliden to continue normal deposition operations despite a temporarily exclusion of its Downstream Dams until April 2025.

Thuysbaert, J., J. Piccolo-Lawrance , J. Quinn and R. Girard. 2024. “Improving Tailings Deposition: A Drone and Satellite Survey Validation Framework for Enhanced Facility Management,” in Proceedings of the Tailings and Mine Waste Conference, 10-13 November 2024. Colorado, USA.