Finnish Firm Develops Technology to Use Mining Byproducts in Construction


Betolar, a Finnish materials technology company, is promoting technology that offers the mining industry an opportunity to use “side-stream” materials such as smelter slag, fly ash or other mineral processing byproducts to supplement concrete applications or serve as secure binders for mining waste, allowing those materials to be used in civil engineering structures at the mine site.

“There is huge potential to exploit the byproducts of the mining industry, with a significant commercial value. With our technology, the side streams can be used as binders and aggregates for concrete, reducing, among other things, the use of cement and its negative impact on the climate,” Pasi Karekivi, Betolar’s mining business development director, said at the Fennoscandian Exploration and Mining conference in Levi, Finland.

According to the company, a significant share of CO2 emissions from construction comes from cement production. With the increasing use of concrete structures, without alternative binders the demand for cement would increase at an accelerating rate. Betolar maintains its solutions can process mining and metal industry by-products into cement substitutes, enabling side-stream materials to be used in large mass structures in the mining industry. Betolar said its solution can replace most or all of the use of cement in mining structures, and even economically useless side streams can be used safely to stabilize soil and tailings instead of being landfilled.

In addition to finding uses for common furnace slag or fly ash, Betolar is looking for additional mining-generated sidestream or byproduct materials as potential candidates for cement replacement. “The total availability of standardized side-stream materials such as blast furnace slag and fly ash is only about a quarter of the quantities needed to replace cement. New sources of side streams must therefore be found. In addition, the availability of blast furnace slag and fly ash will decrease significantly in the near future as a result of the green shift,” said Karekivi.

Betolar is conducting extensive research into side-stream materials using digital solutions to find and standardize new cement substitutes for construction use. “The benefits are multiple, as mining side streams can be used to make concrete without cement. The by-products that currently end up as waste thus gain a commercial value, as they can be used both as binders and aggregates.” In 2022 Betolar was granted a patent for treating waste material and converting it into a reinforcing binder.

The company pointed out that globally, the mining, metal extraction and beneficiation processes generate huge amounts of metal-containing wastewater, sludge and slurries, which are difficult to treat and pose environmental risks. The Betolar process transforms waste material, such as gypsum slurry, into a reactive and consolidating binder that can be used to harden and stabilize the waste material to be disposed of in a cost-effective way. The economic benefits come from reduced investment and maintenance costs for tailings storage facilities. In addition, the environmental safety of the mine and the management of water and dust will be significantly improved.

Betolar has developed cementless or low-cement building material technology solutions for various precast concrete products, from pavers to hollow- core slabs. The mining solutions, said the company, are expected to expand its offering and enable the use of mine side streams in the transition from a linear to a circular economy. It recently joined Mining Finland, a non-profit association that promotes export of Finnish mining technologies.


As featured in Womp 2023 Vol 12 - www.womp-int.com