

Traditional disposal of the high-water content slime from the beneficiating and washing of the bauxite mine requires lots of land and a long time to consolidate, which has attracted a wide range of environmental and social concerns. High-speed centrifugal test was carried out to investigate the water property and composition of high-water content bauxite washing mud. Test results indicated that the bound water content ranged from 29.7% to 31.4%, free water content ranged from 250.6% to 252.3%. The bound water accounted for only 11%, while the free water accounted for about 89% of total water content. A series of model tests were conducted to study the slurry-water separation property of high-water content bauxite mine slime. Experiments showed that controlling the vacuum load application process can effectively inhibit the formation of low-permeability stratum around the drainage body. The final settlement increased by 31.5% and the amount of water discharge increased by 39.52% compared with the conventional vacuum preloading method. Moreover, the water content may decrease from 281.9% to 53.6% within 60 hours with the increase of density of drainage body under the controlled vacuum load application process.