Research Article Electroosmotic Dewatering of Iron Ore Tailings: A Laboratory Study to Improve Geotechnical Properties Salih Y¨ uksek Department of Civil Engineering, Sivas Cumhuriyet University, Sivas 58140, Turkey Correspondence should be addressed to Salih Y¨ uksek; syuksek@cumhuriyet.edu.tr Received 19 August 2022; Revised 6 October 2022; Accepted 19 October 2022; Published 28 October 2022 Academic Editor: Jijo James Copyright © 2022 Salih Y¨ uksek. is is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Minerals are subjected to ore processing to turn them into usable and saleable raw materials. First of all, the ore is reduced to the smallest size with the crushing-grinding process, and after using water and chemical additives, according to the characteristics of the ore, useful minerals are taken, and unwanted minerals are stored in the tailings pools. Approximately, 26 million tons of mineral wastes were generated annually from ore processing facilities in Turkey. e construction of tailings pools, the stability of the tailing sludge, and the safety of dams are a burdensome issue faced by miners. In the ore plants, an average of 3 tons of water is used to enrich 1 ton of ore, and most of the wastewater cannot be removed by traditional methods, causing various economic, environmental, and stability problems. In this study, the dewatering of an iron ore tailing by applying different voltages by the electroosmosis method was investigated in the laboratory environment. By discharging the water of the iron ore tailings by the electroosmosis method, the solid content was increased from 43.01% to 87.63%. us, it has been observed that there will be a significant improvement in the geotechnical properties of the tailings’ material. It has been estimated that electroosmotic dewatering rises with increasing the voltage gradient and the energy consumption varies in the range of 0.588–30.645 kWh/dry ton. e void ratio decreased from 5.58% to 0.23%. In the dewatering experiments, different parameters such as the amount of water discharged, density, void ratio, water content, and power consumed were measured or calculated and the relationships between them were discussed with graphics. In electroosmosis experiments, it has been observed that besides the voltage applied in the discharge of water, the mineralogy of the tailings has a significant effect. Since there are serious abrasions on the electrodes used in the experiments, alternative electrodes should be tried. 1. Introduction While the mining industry is growing rapidly in the world, it also causes a wide variety of social and environmental effects [1]. Mineral processing facilities produce two types of products, categorised as either economic or noneconomic. e noneconomic product, usually known as tailings, consists of waste (by-product), small quantities of valuable minerals or metals, chemicals, organics, and process water [2]. It is emphasized that with the increase in the production of low grade ores in the future, it is inevitable to produce higher tonnage of tailings, and in 2010, approximately 14 billion tons of waste was produced globally by the mining industry [3]. In the mining industry, the growing demand for mineral products and the accumulation of large amounts of fine mineral tailings generated by mega-scale mining operations are still an ongoing problem [4]. Many tailings contain significant amounts of fines with clay minerals that slowly settle under self-weight consolidation. ese tailings with high water content and low shear strength cause in- stability [5]. e construction of large tailing dams is re- quired for the storage of wastes, and the mining investors are faced with the geotechnical and geo-environmental prob- lems of these tailing storage facilities. In some tailing storage facilities, highly wet tailings with low solids have been de- posited. Many years after placement of tailings, the water content remains relatively high, resulting in high risks of instability and extremely difficult rehabilitation [6]. In fact, collapses and landslides have caused great damage to many mine tailing dams in the world [7–9]. e role of water in Hindawi Advances in Civil Engineering Volume 2022, Article ID 7662997, 12 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2022/7662997