A metal mine produces a large amount of tailings slag every year, which is stored in a tailings pond after dry discharge treatment. With the pond capacity becoming increasingly tight and environmental requirements becoming stricter, the mine urgently needed to crush the tailings slag for underground backfilling and road construction, achieving waste reduction and resource utilization. However, the tailings slag contains a mixture of coarse particles and fine mud, with unstable moisture content. Traditional crushing equipment frequently clogged and wore out quickly, and could not run continuously and stably.

tailings slag crusher

After fully understanding the customer’s needs, HSM recommended a tailings slag dedicated double tooth roll crusher, together with a closed‑circuit screening process, and successfully solved the problem.

Customer pain points

• Complex material properties: The tailings slag contains both coarse particles (such as waste rock chips) and fine mud, with moisture content often fluctuating at high levels. Ordinary crushers were easily clogged by fine mud sticking to the crushing chamber and screen plates, requiring multiple shutdowns per shift for cleaning.

• Severe equipment wear: Residual metal particles and hard quartz grains in the tailings slag caused severe wear on hammers and jaw plates, leading to very short replacement intervals and high consumables costs.

• Over‑crushing problem: Impact crushers, in order to break down large pieces, turned a large amount of material into powder. Too many fines could not be used for underground backfilling and instead increased the binder consumption.

HSM solution

HSM provided one tailings slag double tooth roll crusher and optimized the process flow:

• Low‑speed shearing crushing: The double rolls rotate toward each other at low speed, using shearing and tensile forces to break the lumpy material in the tailings slag without producing excessive fines. The product is mostly irregularly shaped lumps, very suitable for underground backfilling and road base material.

• Screen‑free gravity discharge: Once the material is crushed to a size smaller than the roll gap, it falls directly by gravity. There is no screen plate, completely eliminating the clogging problem caused by fine mud.

• Hydraulic output size adjustment: According to the backfilling process requirements, the roll gap can be quickly adjusted via the hydraulic system to flexibly control the maximum product size.

• Customized wear‑resistant tooth plates: To address the high content of hard particles, high‑chromium alloy hardfacing tooth plates are used, significantly extending wear life. The split structure allows replacement of only the worn tooth plates.

• Closed‑circuit screening: The crushed material is classified by a vibrating screen; the oversize is returned to the crusher for re‑processing, ensuring all product meets the specification.

  

  tailings slag crusher

Operating results

After commissioning, the customer reported significant improvements in several areas:

• Clogging completely eliminated: The equipment runs continuously for many shifts without shutdown for cleaning. Operating rate increased greatly, and labor intensity was significantly reduced.

• Over‑crushing rate greatly reduced: The product contains very few fines, with most particles concentrated in the target size range. When used for underground backfilling, binder consumption decreased and backfill strength became more stable.

• Wear part life significantly extended: The high‑chromium alloy tooth plates performed well even with metal‑bearing tailings slag, lasting much longer than the original equipment, and maintenance costs dropped significantly.

• Uniform and controllable product size: Hydraulic adjustment is convenient and quick, allowing changes for backfilling or road building requirements without replacing any components.

Customer feedback

The mine’s processing plant manager said: “HSM’s tailings slag crusher has truly enabled us to achieve resource utilization of our tailings. The equipment is stable, does not clog or stick, does not produce excessive fines, and is easy to maintain. Now our tailings not only do not occupy land, but can also be sold as backfill aggregate – getting two benefits from one action.”

Conclusion

For tailings slag with complex composition, high moisture content and hard particles, the HSM double tooth roll crusher – with its core technologies of low‑speed shearing, gravity discharge, hydraulic gap adjustment and long‑life wear‑resistant tooth plates – successfully overcomes the three major problems of clogging, wear and over‑crushing, providing an efficient and reliable crushing solution for tailings slag resource utilization.

Tailings slag crusher at crushing site

If you are also facing difficulties in tailings slag disposal or utilization, please contact HSM for a customized crushing solution.

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