The History, Challenges, and New Developments in the Management and Use of Bauxite Residue

The paper serves to briefly review the disposal and storage of bauxite residue from the late nineteenth century and discusses how the environmental aspects of storage and disposal have changed. The paper describes some of the remediation/rehabilitation trends and describes the success of a soil-free approach in Jamaica. The paper further discusses the development of uses for bauxite residue over the same period. In spite of over a century of effort looking for uses, over 1200 patents and hundreds of technically successful trials, less than 4 million tonnes of the 150 million tonnes of bauxite residue produced annually is used in a productive way. A large proportion of material that is used is in China and driven by government pressure. This paper discusses the barriers and why the technical successes do not always translate into large-scale uses. The most successful large-scale uses are reviewed and include cement production, raw material for iron and steel manufacture, manufacture of building materials, landfill capping, road construction, and soil amelioration. Some of the more recent promising developments are also presented.