Cradle to grave
A new mobile water station has been
developed to provide safe drinking
water for remote workforces in the
mining industry.
“Hydration stations from Bluewater
offer tangible benefits to mining
operators where providing drinking
water can be logistically challenging
and costly,” says James Steere,
Bluewater Africa Operations Director.
Andrew Cooper, MD of
FreshCamp Services, has 20
years of experience in logistics,
site mobilisation and day-to-day
contractor village management, and
says that provision of clean drinking
water can account for as much as
10% of the catering costs for mining
operations.
“Basically, the more remote you
are, the more complicated delivering
clean water becomes. There are places
where even treated water may be
unsuitable for drinking. In some cases,
water is transported in tanked vehicles
from site to site, transferred at each
site to an overhead tank, then reverse
osmosis (RO) treated again before
being fed into the camp water system.
It’s all highly inefficient,” says Cooper.
Bluewater has been piloting its
mobile water trailer and an add-on
micro water purification plant since
late 2018.
A single Bluewater Trailer can
purify and dispense up to 2 000 litres
of drinking water on site per day
from most water sources. The trailer’s
compact design enables multiple water
points to be established around an
operating site and the mobility allows
for on or offsite centralised water
purification. Where multiple trailers
are required, Bluewater has developed
a small treatment plant at which
Safe water for remote sites
A single Bluewater trailer can purify and dispense up to 2 000 litres of drinking water on site per day from
most water sources.
trailers can refill before delivery to teams,
effectively creating a highly efficient hub-
and-spoke treatment and delivery process.
The treatment plant uses a patented
SuperiorOsmosis purification technology
and requires a 5m x 5m area to set up and
operate. It can even generate safe drinking
water from normally tough-to-purify
brackish or borehole water. The 3m-long
Bluewater Trailer also uses Bluewater
technology to further purify the water and
offers chilled and sparkling water from
multiple dispenser points mounted into the
sides of each trailer.
Epiroc has been selected to equip
Black Rock Mine in South Africa with
Mobilaris Mining Intelligence (MMI),
a decision support solution for mine
efficiency and safety. MMI enables
situational awareness and is designed to
visualise and support mining operation in
all its complexity, in real-time.
Black Rock Mine, part of Assmang
South Africa, ordered MMI, a solution
which will support their business
improvement processes. This will be the
first MMI installation in a mine using
room and pillar.
Mobilaris Mining Intelligence
provides a 3D real-time information
model where not only the position of
[38] MINING MIRROR JUNE 2019
Black Rock goes digital
Epiroc and Mobilaris Intelligence
machines, vehicles or personnel but also other
vital information sources like shift planning,
machine and production data are presented.
“MMI will help to increase production
and utilisation. The solution enables an
unprecedented opportunity for mining
personnel to make right decisions faster
than ever before,” says Pierre Becker, general
manager at Black Rock Mine.
Through MMI, the Black Rock Mine
control room will evolve to a source of real-
time production data fully integrated with
planning, task dispatch, machine telemetry
data, mobile operator clients and a layer of
analytics to collect and monitor insights and
KPIs for the mine production. The project is
expected to yield significant improvements
in employee safety, process efficiency and
overall production.
www.miningmirror.co.za