Tailings Filtration: Water Jet Spray Cleaning of a Blinded Iron Ore Filter Cloth

The global growth in demand for raw materials is leading to a continuous increase in the mining of ores and thus to an expanding volume of tailings to be stored. To ensure safer storage and an optimized recovery of process water, the tailings slurry is often thickened followed by filtration in filter presses and dry stacking. However, an increasing blinding effect during the time of operation requires cleaning or replacement of the filter media. Cloth washing using spray nozzles is a possible solution, but there is insufficient quantitative data published on the performance. For this reason, this article examines the cleaning of an iron ore cloth from tailings filtration by continuous water spraying. Water flux, spray time and direction (front- and back-wash) variation were investigated by evaluating cleaning performance using flow resistance measurement and comparison to the unused and industrially used state where blinding has occurred. Sufficient cleaning and achieving the flow rate of the unused cloth is possible. However, excessive spray cleaning should be avoided, as damage to the fibers may occur. Spray cleaning can be stated to be economically reasonable since a water demand of 2.5 m3 m−2 and an energy consumption of 6.5 kWh m−2 is necessary for a sufficient regeneration. Furthermore, the spray cleaning is assumed to cost USD 6 m−2, which is approximately similar to replacing the fabric but reduces plastic waste.