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Using non-hazardous industrial residues in mine waste remediation is beneficial not only for the mining industry where substantial amounts of the waste generated have potential to produce acid rock drainage and pollute the environment, but also the providing industry, minimizing the waste landfilled. In this study green liquor dregs (GLD), residue from 15 different paper mills were characterized to valorize it as a potential product as a cover material. In another part of the study, one of the GLDs and a local till were characterized to determine the optimal mixture of GLD amended till to be used in a field application at the closed Näsliden Mine in northern Sweden. The study concluded 10% GLD-amended till to be the optimal recipe and was successfully applied at the Näsliden mine waste dump. However, the great variability in the characteristics of GLD creates challenges if it is to be valorized as a product., Validerad;2024;Nivå 2;2024-04-02 (hanlid);Funder: Boliden Mineral AB; RISE Processum AB;Full text License: CC BY 4.0This article has previously appeared as a manuscript in a thesis., GLAD, Paperchain

In this study, a mixing procedure of sulfur-rich soil and cement-based binder to enhance the soil’s unconfined compressive strength (UCS) was tested in field conditions for geotechnical applications. The focus was to evaluate uniformity of industrial size soil-binder mixture, blended by existing method. This paper outlined sampling strategy and the number of samples needed for a valid uniformity evaluation. Moreover, this study emphasized the difference between field mixing and laboratory mixture preparation by comparing UCS of stabilized soil samples in the field and UCS of corresponding samples mixed and prepared in the laboratory environment. In the field, soil and cement were blended in two to four stages with 5% and 7% cement—the percentages being based on the soil’s dry weight under field conditions. Samples were taken from the field mixtures after each stage. Since the number of samples needed to be representative of mixture characteristics for large-scale mixing is not standardized, this field experiment included two phases. The first phase was dedicated to finding a sampling strategy for a large soil pile along with measuring UCS of collected samples. In the second phase, sample collection was conducted based on the results of sampling strategy from the first phase. In the laboratory, samples with percentages of binder similar to the amount of binder in the field were also prepared. Both field and laboratory samples were prepared using the tapping method in the laboratory for UCS test. Samples were cured under similar conditions for 28 days. The results showed that the uniformity of mixture improved after each additional mixing stage. In addition, while spots with low UCS were observed in the second mixing step, these spots were eliminated in the third mixing step, and results of the UCS tests were comparatively uniform. Moreover, comparison of the samples revealed that the UCS of the laboratory mixture is higher than that of the field mixture. This showed, Validerad;2023;Nivå 2;2023-04-14 (hanlid);Funder: Interreg Botnia-Atlantica program, Sustainable treatment of coastal deposited sulfde soils (STASIS)

Hydraulic conductivity is often used as a measure to evaluate the effectiveness of a sealing layer material on top of mine waste. However, the most important soil parameter minimizing the oxygen diffusion to the mine waste is the water retention capacity (WRC) of the sealing layer, as a high saturation corresponds to a low oxygen diffusion rate. This study shows that an amendment of Green Liquor Dregs (GLD), an industrial residue, to a till increases its WRC and has therefore potential to be a more accurate method to evaluate the effectiveness of a sealing layer than hydraulic conductivity., Funder: Boliden Mineral AB