The reserves of non-ferrous metal ores have been depleted in recent years, but metal production is not decreasing, but increasing from year to year. Therefore, the mining industry has to extract and process very large volumes of ores. Complex ores usually contain less than 1% of usable metal. To extract the metal, it is necessary to crush the ore into small particles. In connection with this technology, the amount of fine tailings from beneficiation increases dramatically, as well as the load on tailings hydrotransport. To improve the efficiency of hydraulic conveying, it is necessary to increase the concentration of fine solids in the pulp. The ability of solids to form spatial structures in the slurry is of paramount importance because such hydraulic mixtures can be considered sedimentation resistant. This paper studies the sedimentation stability of tailings from copper ore processing plants.
