Cradle to grave
Sediment accumulation in a process water dam
became a major issue at a coal mine. Integrated Pump Rental applied its SlurryBlaster solution
to a process water pond at a coal mine.
The SlurryBlaster is considered one of the most effective
hydro-mining solutions for removing sediment accumulation. The SlurryBlaster removing slurry and sediment
accumulation in a process water dam.
It is not uncommon for factors like
high rainfall or an unexpected process
fault to cause overfilling of a process
dam with silt. This is accordin g to Lee
Vine, managing director at Integrated
Pump Rental. “A mining operation
recently needed a process dam that
had become filled with coal fines to be
emptied. The situation raised the risk
of an environmental incident, which
potentially could have interrupted the
smooth operation of the coal processing
plant,” says Vine.
One of the specific issues with coal
fines is that they settle rapidly and create
a highly compact layer at the bottom
of a pond. This makes it more difficult
to create a slurry that can be pumped
away. “The SlurryBlaster is our effective
hydro-mining solution for removing slurry
and sediment accumulation on dam walls
and inside dams, boasting a capacity of up
to 2 800 litres per minute, with a nominal
inlet pressure of seven bar,” says Vine.
In this case, the coal fines could be
blasted into an accumulation point,
where a slurry pump was then used to
transfer high tonnages of the sediment
to a location specified by the customer.
Integrated Pump Rental also provided
the pipelines and fittings that the
solution required.
“As part of our project assessment, we
ascertained that the slurry demonstrated
Photos by
Desilting coal fines from
process water ponds
a low pH level of just three,” he says.
“This high acidity meant that we had to
deploy our stainless steel range of pumps
and equipment to ensure corrosion-
resistance.”
Vine highlights that the mine was
able to take the dam offline, and that
water from another source was used to
feed the mine’s process plant while the
desilting process was under way.
“To conduct the hydro-mining option
on this project, we secured an external
water source and used two monitoring
guns to attack the silt — turning it
into a slurry that we could then pump
through our own pipeline to the tailings
dam,” he says.
OCTOBER 2018 MINING MIRROR
[37]