The world's resource industries, which include minerals, coal, and the sand mining of oil, are the world's largest producers of waste. One alumina plant in Australia will produce as much as 15 000 t/d on a dry basis while a copper mine could produce as much as 250 000 t/d on a dry basis. Fundamental science and engineering research at Monash University and The University of Melbourne in Australia has enabled the alumina industry worldwide to reduce the volume of waste produced by about 50 per cent. Valuable raw materials are recovered and the risk of storage failure is eliminated. There are at least two major storage failures annually worldwide, resulting in deaths and environmental disasters. The failure in Hungary of a storage facility for bauxite residue in October 2011 resulted in eight deaths and a fine of 472 M ($US648 M) and the arrest of the Chief Executive Officer. The new technique called dry disposal produces a paste for stacking and drying instead of a water-like suspension to be stored in a dam or pond. Simply by removing water from the suspension and re-using and recycling water, represents a step towards a more sustainable practice in the industry. As the concentration of such a suspension is increased as a result of dewatering, the materials exhibit non-Newtonian behaviour, characterised by shear thinning, a yield stress, and in some instances, by thixotropic behaviour. Such high concentration, non-ideal (dirty) suspensions in the resource industries has meant that new rheological methods and techniques were needed for both shear and compression rheology to measure and interpret the basic flow properties. Also, some older empirical techniques needed to be modified and interpreted in a more fundamental way so that the results could be used in design. The presentation reviews these techniques and illustrates how the industry itself has motivated their development. Understanding and exploiting this rheology has resulted in dramatic improvement in the waste disposal strategy for some industries, but many have failed to embrace the available technology. Why? Is regulation the answer? Probably not. The presentation concludes that a greater positive change in the waste management practice will occur in the future, motivated by a number of factors, including public perception, water recovery, the necessity to earn the right to operate, and perhaps even by common sense accounting. The presentation is an overview of 30 years of work with the resource industries on environmental waste minimisation. Aspects have been published in the Proceedings of Paste and Thickened Tailings Conference series (Various authors, 1999 - 2012), held annually since 1999, and in Chemical Engineering Science in 2007 (Boger, 2009)._x000D_
*Abstract only. No paper was prepared for this abstract* CITATION:Boger, D V, 2012. Rheology and the resource industries, in Proceedings Life-of-Mine 2012 , pp 5-6 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).