Tailings#Pond storage

As a settling tank is referred to in the mining concrete pools or by leveling and filling of dams artificial ponds ( ponds ) for the treatment of sewage ( slurries ) from the processing of mineral raw materials.

Alternatively, some only regionally or used in the past names are settling pond, sludge pond tailings and Industrial, Saarland Absinkweiher and sludge pond.

Settling tanks are usually set up in the immediate vicinity of a mine. The costs incurred in the preparation troubled waters are channeled through pipes into the settling tank. There, the finely divided solids in the slurry of gravity put the following in the bottom. The clarified water at the surface can be removed and reused over collecting ducts. The pond is filling up gradually with the sedimented masses. This then either remain in place or be dredged and elsewhere tilted ( eg, on a heap ).

The method described provides the technologically simplest and most economically efficient type of water recovery from water - solid mixtures dar. However, particular take ponds comparatively large areas to complete and are - depending on the composition of the residual solid - in some cases difficult rekultivierbar. The system is therefore only such ponds, where the quality of the remaining area is not or only a slight degradation to the initial state, without any problems. Elsewhere remedy is to gradually with Clarifier ( see above) or dehydrated resulting pulps mechanically by means of filter presses and tilted it also.

Globally, settling tanks are a widely used technique, which, however, because of the environmental problems associated with errors in planning and implementing some places contributes to bring mining to talk. In Germany, settling basins have been created, operated, for example in coal mines of the Saar, and up to the 90s. The remaining areas are doing there today preferably used for the reasons mentioned above for space-intensive uses that make little or no demands on soil texture. Thus arose on the site of the former Absinkweihers at the pit Göttelborn a photovoltaic system.

• Water Management in Mining
• Still waters