Further development of paste definition from the viewpoint of yield tress

In order to determine the suitable concentration of paste for industrial application, a further development of paste definition was proposed from the viewpoint of yield stress. The slurry saturation concentration is defined at the yield stress of (200 ±25) Pa. The suitable concentration of paste for industrial application is the slurry concentration range at the saturation ratio of 101.5% to 105.3% by back-stepping. Two tailings samples (named as Tailings 1 and 2) from different mines were used to testify the paste definition. Tailing 1 was used in laboratory experiment and Tailing 2 for engineering verification. The results show that the maximum concentration of Tailing 1 is 73.71% by indoor dynamic consolidation experiment, and the maximum concentration of theoretic prediction by the paste definition is 73.89%, which has the difference of 0.18% compared with the laboratory experiment. The maximum underflow concentration of Tailing 2 can reach 68% by a deep cone thickener of some mine, and the maximum concentration is 68.97% by prediction of the paste definition, a 0.97% discrepancy in comparison with the underflow of the actual thickener. Hence, the paste definition proposed in the paper has high reliability for predicting the concentration of paste.