Coagulants, flocculants, and pH adjusters for mine process water and tailings circuits — ferric chloride, alum, polyacrylamide, polyDADMAC, lime, and caustic soda for clarification, neutralization, and water recovery.
Mine water treatment chemicals are the coagulants, flocculants, pH adjusters, and scale inhibitors used to clarify, neutralize, and recycle the process water moving through grinding, flotation, leaching, and tailings circuits. A working program almost always combines two functions: raising pH to precipitate dissolved metals, then settling the resulting solids. Specify the pH stage and the clarification stage separately, because the reagent that neutralizes acidity is rarely the one that drops the floc.
Lime and caustic soda are the two standard alkalis. Calcium oxide (quicklime) is the lower cost-per-tonne option and the workhorse for neutralizing acidic drainage, but it adds slaking, handling, and extra settled solids. Caustic soda meters cleanly as a liquid and gives tighter pH control at a higher reagent cost. Where solids loading is already high, the cleaner dosing of caustic can pay back through smaller thickeners; where reagent cost rules, lime wins.
Clarification relies on a coagulant plus a flocculant. Ferric chloride and aluminium sulfate neutralize the charge on fine suspended solids; a high-molecular-weight polyacrylamide or a cationic polyDADMAC then bridges the destabilized particles into settleable flocs. Run a jar test before fixing dose: underflow density and overflow clarity both shift sharply with the coagulant-to-flocculant ratio, and overdosing the polymer can re-stabilize the very solids you are trying to drop.
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