Water stewardship: unlocking opportunities through innovation

Taking a holistic approach to water stewardship

Effective water stewardship requires collaboration among mining companies, technology providers, regulators, and local communities. Transparent water governance, stakeholder engagement, and knowledge sharing are essential to achieving socially equitable, environmentally sustainable, and economically viable water use in mining. At the mineral processing plant itself, a whole-flowsheet approach to water stewardship is needed, optimising existing equipment via upgrades and advanced process control solutions while exploring new technologies and processes.

Water stewardship’s strategic imperative should not be underestimated. Yet, by leveraging innovation and working holistically, the mining industry can turn water management challenges into opportunities for value creation, enabling a future where mining operations are both productive and sustainable, ensuring that precious water resources are preserved for generations to come.

Water stewardship: the big picture

Water is indispensable in mining operations, particularly in conventional mineral processing systems. However, the sector’s water use also makes it vulnerable to various political, economic, social, and technical challenges.

Many key mining regions are already located in areas of water scarcity. Climate change is expected to increase the frequency of droughts and floods, altering water supplies to mining sites and surrounding communities. These changes exacerbate the potential for water conflict and disruption to mining operations. Finally, as ore grade declines, more material must be processed to maintain (let alone increase) production levels, raising water consumption further unless new processes are adopted.

Water stewardship is also inextricably linked to tailings management. Tailings dewatering recovers process water for recycling while reducing the footprint and improving the stability of tailings storage facilities. Future trends will likely exacerbate this challenge. The processing of lower-grade ores will naturally produce an increased amount of waste and, with it, an increased amount of tailings water. At the same time, climatic changes, such as periods of more intense precipitation, risk overwhelming wet tailings storage facilities. Enhancing water stewardship will, thus, have a direct additional beneficial impact on tailings management.

This multifaceted risk landscape makes improving mining’s water stewardship essential to ensuring the long-term sustainability of the industry and the critical metals and minerals it supplies. It’s why zero water waste is one of three key pillars of the FLS MissionZero Mine vision for the future of mining, alongside zero energy waste and zero emissions. As part of this, FLS has identified several opportunities for tackling the water challenge through reduced consumption and improved recovery.