In mining, tailings or tails are the materials left over after the process of separating the valuable fraction from the uneconomic fraction (gangue) of an ore. Tailings are different from overburden, which is the waste rock or other material that overlies an ore or mineral body and is displaced during mining without being processed.
Yellow boy in a stream receiving acid mine drainage from surface coal mining
Phosphogypsum stack located near Fort Meade, Florida. These contain the waste byproducts of the phosphate fertilizer industry.
Red mud near Stade (Germany)
Bauxite, an aluminium ore (Hérault department, France). The reddish colour is due to iron oxides that make up the main part of the red mud.
Mineral processing is the process of separating commercially valuable minerals from their ores in the field of extractive metallurgy. Depending on the processes used in each instance, it is often referred to as ore dressing or ore milling.
A set of Cornish stamps
Froth flotation cells used to concentrate copper and nickel sulfide minerals
Screening ore through a sieve, Fixed Nitrogen Research Laboratory, 1930