Scoping the life cycle assessment of Fine Future flotation technology-towards more sustainable mining

Separation by flotation is one of the common technologies used during beneficiation stage in mining industry, aiming at concentrating valuable minerals for downstream refining stages. Currently a new froth flotation technology is being developed under FineFuture (FF) project, funded by the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 821265). If implemented, this technology can valorise fine mineral particles instead of discarding them as residues, nevertheless this does not necessarily ensure the sustainability of the technology. In this paper, the environmental sustainability of the new technology is addressed by showing goal and scope phase set-up of two life cycle assessments applied to two industrial partners of the project. Each company works on a different mineral and has a different beneficiation scheme. The goal of assessment is to compare the current production chains with the new one where FF technology is to be implemented to eventually evaluate which option is more sustainable for each company. Both case studies do not contain flotation unit in their current beneficiation system. The first is Grecian Magnesite whose main products are magnesite concentrates (〖MgCO〗_3) and magnesia (MgO). The foreseen plan is to apply the new flotation technology either on residual fines (< 4 mm) from washing units in beneficiation which are currently discarded, or on low quality 〖MgCO〗_3 concentrates (<90% 〖MgCO〗_3) after beneficiation stage to acquire higher concentrations of 〖MgCO〗_3. The second case study is Eramet for manganese (Mn) concentrate production. The objective is to apply the FF technology to tailings which are the discarded residues of manganese beneficiation process, yet they contain a considerable amount of Mn. The tailings are currently sent to storage ponds, but the future aim is to process them with FF technology to recover enriched slimes that contain high concentration of Mn before sending the rest to the ponds.