Abstract
The concept of mining or extracting valuable metals and minerals from technospheric stocks is referred to as technospheric mining. As potential secondary sources of valuable materials, mining these technospheric stocks can offer solutions to minimise the waste for final disposal and augment metals’ or minerals’ supply, and to abate environmental legacies brought by minerals’ extraction. Indeed, waste streams produced by the mining and mineral processing industry can cause long-term negative environmental legacies if not managed properly. There are thus strong incentives/drivers for the mining industry to recover and repurpose mine and mineral wastes since they contain valuable metals and materials that can generate different applications and new products. In this paper, technospheric mining of mine wastes and its application are reviewed, and the challenges that technospheric mining is facing as a newly suggested concept are presented. Unification of standards and policies on mine wastes and tailings as part of governance, along with the importance of research and development, data management, and effective communication between the industry and academia, are identified as necessary to progress technospheric mining to the next level. This review attempts to link technospheric mining to the promotion of environmental sustainability practices in the mining industry by incorporating green technology, sustainable chemistry, and eco-efficiency. We argue that developing environmentally friendly processes and green technology can ensure positive legacies from the mining industry. By presenting specific examples of the mine wastes, we show how the valuable metals or minerals they contain can be recovered using various metallurgical and mineral processing techniques to close the loop on waste in favour of a circular economy.
Highlights
Technospheric mining refers to the extraction or recovery of metals and minerals from the technosphere, a stock or accumulation of materials generated by human activities and technological processes
Once the challenges of developing efficient processes are overcome and technological issues are resolved, mineral wastes can provide a good source of valuable metals from huge amounts of deposits that have been generated by mining practices
Technospheric mining is a concept of extracting mineral resources from the technosphere, which is the material stock that has been generated by anthropogenic activity
Summary
Technospheric mining refers to the extraction or recovery of metals and minerals from the technosphere, a stock or accumulation of materials generated by human activities and technological processes. Overburden, tailing, metallurgical slag, process residues, and waste effluents [8,9] These wastes create significant on-site storage problems and pose human and environmental risks due to dust generation and potential release of heavy and toxic metals they contain. Sustainable ways to store, manage, reuse, or reprocess these wastes are indispensable to make mining more eco-efficient and optimise its social and economic benefits These regenerative aims constitute the main premise of technospheric mining in the mining industry. The authors attempt to take an intergenerational and interdisciplinary perspective that extends beyond the immediate or short-term notions of waste repurposing and understanding of material flows in the lithosphere through technospheric mining
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