Alumbrera Mine Tailings Management System Design Construction, Challenges and Acheivements

The Alumbrera Mine is a world class copper/gold mine located in Catamarca Province in the foothills of the Andes in north western Argentina. The project location is shown on Figure 1. The mine is owned and operated by Minera Alumbrera Limited (MAA) that comprises a joint venture by Rio Algom Ltd. of Canada and Mount Isa Mines Pty. Ltd. and North Pty. Ltd. of Australia.
The Alumbrera mine comprises an open pit mine that has a geological reserve in excess of 1 billion tonnes and a currently estimated mineable reserve of approximately 550 million tonnes. The ore is crushed, milled and processed using standard flotation techniques to produce a copper concentrate. The concentrate is transported as a slurry by pipeline some 314 km to the city of San Miguel de Tucuman where it is dewatered and transported by rail to the port of San Martin and thence shipped to smelters world wide.
The tailings flow as a slurry by gravity to the Tailings Management System (TMS), 5 kilometres to the south of the mill where they are stored behind a zoned earth and rockfill embankment. The supernatant water from the slurry is decanted by a floating pump barge and recycled to the mill. Makeup water for the mill is pumped from a well field in the Campo Arenal, 25 kilometres to the north of the mine.