The mining industry generates thousands of tons of waste every day. Some types of waste pose environmental risks, while others can be considered important sources of valuable materials. Nowadays, the re-processing of mine tailings starts to be seen as an increasingly more critical operation because of the need to shift from the current linear economy model to the circular one. However, full-scale mine tailings processing is still in the early stages. One of the important factors that could contribute to its spreading would be developing a simple method of preliminary assessment of the profitability of mine tailings processing. Therefore, the aim of this study is to propose a method that could be used to estimate the cost of mine tailings processing for the recovery of valuable elements. The proposed approach deploys dimensional analysis, as well as sensitivity analysis. In order to illustrate the applicability of the proposed method, data from 48 Chilean mining operations were analyzed. Since copper is the element whose concentration in Chilean mine tailings is the highest, and vanadium is the main critical raw material that can be obtained from the same source, both were selected to be recovered. The results show that a plant that processes mine tailings to recover vanadium pentoxide (V₂O₅) via hydrometallurgical processes would incur a processing cost of 6,218 US$/t of V₂O₅. On the other hand, a processing cost for a plant engaged in copper recovery would be 2,953 US$/t of Cu. This represents a reduction by 40.87% and 44.20%, respectively, compared to the operating costs of similar mining operations. In addition, the sensitivity analysis determined that the unit price of electricity and electricity consumption are the two variables having the highest impact on the total processing cost. The obtained results are valid for Chilean mines, however, the proposed approach could be widely used to estimate mine tailing processing cost for the recovery of other elements in other countries.

采矿业每天产生数千吨废物。某些类型的废物会带来环境风险，而其他类型的废物可被视为有价值材料的重要来源。如今，由于需要从当前的线性经济模式转变为循环经济模式，尾矿再处理开始被视为一项越来越重要的操作。然而，全面的尾矿处理仍处于早期阶段。可能有助于其传播的重要因素之一是开发一种简单的方法来初步评估矿山尾矿加工的盈利能力。因此，本研究的目的是提出一种可用于估算矿山尾矿处理成本以回收有价值元素的方法。所提出的方法部署了维度分析，以及敏感性分析。为了说明所提出方法的适用性，分析了来自智利 48 个采矿作业的数据。由于铜是智利尾矿中含量最高的元素，而钒是可从同一来源获得的主要关键原料，因此均选择回收。结果表明，一家处理尾矿以回收五氧化二钒（V₂ O ₅ ) 通过湿法冶金工艺将产生 6,218 美元/吨 V ₂ O ₅的加工成本。另一方面，从事铜回收的工厂的加工成本将为 2,953 美元/吨铜。与类似采矿作业的运营成本相比，这分别降低了 40.87% 和 44.20%。此外，敏感性分析确定电费单价和用电量是对总加工成本影响最大的两个变量。所得结果对智利矿山有效，但所提出的方法可广泛用于估算矿山尾矿处理成本，以回收其他国家的其他元素。