The waste streams produced in many mineral processing plants are often treated on an "ad hoc" basis, meeting the essential requirements at a given time. These wastes do contain valuable metals, which are not recovered due to lack of overall planning or due to nonoptimal processing. Optimizing existing processes or innovative process design for treatment of these wastes would yield values, conserve a wasting resource, and could reduce environmental hazards. The study will identify currently produced wastes in the industry, assess future trends, quantify recoverable values evaluate present processing technology, and make conceptual process improvements or new innovatie processes. On the basis of these, the study will identify developmental research requirements and generate a research program, offering economic incentives to the industry to process wastes that are not processed, and optimize those that are currently processed.
