Industrial landfills are a potential source of secondary raw materials, providing an opportunity to reduce the use of primary raw material resources. At the Vrhe metallurgical landfill, an advanced mining process is being developed for the active part of the site. Excavated waste will be recycled and reused in the metallurgical and construction sectors, with the process valorised and scaled up for pilot exploitation.
Objectives: To develop an integrated advanced mining process for the Vrhe metallurgical waste landfill, including the excavation of waste disposed in the active part of the Vrhe landfill and the recycling of excavated raw materials for further use in the metallurgical and construction industries. The integrated advanced mining process for the Vrhe landfill will be studied, developed, re-evaluated and upgraded from both technical and environmental perspectives to ensure its scalability for pilot-scale exploitation of the landfill. Mining operations at the Vrhe landfill will commence once positive results have been achieved in the actual development of processes for the excavation and recovery of the disposed waste and in the production of new building materials for reuse. Given the known quantity of waste deposited, these efforts are expected to yield significant amounts of secondary raw materials over the coming decades, which will ultimately allow for the revitalisation of the landfill site.
Figure 1: Six probings were conducted on the landfill site to provide an initial mapping of the landfill structure. The aim was to gather essential information on the heterogeneity and depth composition of the materials within the landfill. These data will help to identify potentially valuable areas and layers of the landfill suitable for further recycling.
Figure 2: The diversity of composition at the landfill was verified through probing, which proved to be an effective approach. Unlike drilling, probing allows for the extraction of larger quantities of material. This is particularly valuable in the case of coarse-grained materials, where drilling methods often fail to provide an adequate insight into the grain composition of such materials.
Figure 3: The composition of the strata at each excavation site was monitored during the probing. A terrain profile was created for each probing, providing a basic insight into the layer composition within the landfill site. Combined with subsequent laboratory analyses, these data allow the identification of prospective areas for material extraction and their subsequent use or recycling.
Figure 4: The probings were carried out to the maximum depth allowed by the reach of the excavator bucket, which extended up to 4 metres. During excavation, the material was sorted according to its homogeneity. The homogeneous layers of the excavated material were sampled for further laboratory testing. Subsequent laboratory testing included grain size composition analysis and chemical tests to identify potentially hazardous leachable elements.
Figure 5: Mining activities were carried out at the active metallurgical waste landfill at Vrhe, an industrial landfill near Celje. The majority of the waste at the landfill is steel slag, with smaller quantities of other metallurgical waste. These include foundry sands, foundry slags and various other metallurgical wastes.
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