Nose to tail mining: an alternative, sustainable source of sand at scale

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2025-02-22 03:00

Australia; QLD

A pile of ore-sand produced by Vale’s iron ore operation in Brazil.

Global demand for sand is a huge sustainability issue, while at the same time the metal mining industry crushes – and discards – billions of tonnes of the same minerals as waste. In this article in One Earth, UQ Professor Daniel Franks and colleagues explore whether a circular economy solution is possible. They propose a paradigm shift that they call 'nose to tail mining' to extract sand by-products during mineral processing before it becomes waste. They demonstrate through examples in Australia and Brazil.

Journal/
conference: One Earth

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: The University of Queensland

Funder: The authors would like to acknowledge our funding partners and collaborators for their support: the Queensland Government (in particular Tony Knight and Janelle Kerr) for their support of the OreSand Knowledge Hub; the Australian Government through Australia’s Economic Accelerator (AEA Seed Grant AE230200013) and the Resources Technology and Critical Minerals Trailblazer; Newcrest Mining and Newmont (in particular David Seaman, Luke Vollert, and John O’Callaghan); Vale (in particular Emile Scheepers, Lais Resende, and Juliana Santos); The University of Queensland (in particular Rebecca Gravina, Vinh Dao, Medhi Serati, Steven Micklethwaite, Anna Littleboy, and Ian MacKenzie); the University of Geneva (Pascal Peduzzi, Arnaud Vander Velpen, Josefine Lynggaard, Damien Friot, and Stephanie Chuah); the University of Exeter (Kathryn Moore and Rob Fitzpatrick); and the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (Douglas Mazzinghy). D.F. is the recipient of an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (FT240100383) funded by the Australian Government.

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