SABI Magazine 2019 October-November | Page 18

Water Deepset Flexible Riser 400m installation at Prieska Copper Mine H ose Manufacturers, a manufacturer of lay flat hoses and Boreline flexible riser for boreholes, was recently approached by a customer looking for a flexible hose that would be able to dewater an old mine shaft just outside the town of Copperton in the Northern Cape and was familiar with our Boreline flexible hose for boreholes of standard depths up to 200m. The shaft in question (1000m depth) held much water that needed to be pumped into holding tanks from a depth of 400m for processing and analysis. The outcome of this processing would determine whether the water could be re-used, and mine activity restarted. many questions were asked and answered about how the pump and hose were to be installed. Once preparations were complete, the installation began in earnest. Energy levels were high and the teams were eager to make progress. While our standard Boreline is designed to function at an instal- lation depth of 200m from 3” to 6”, we had a new hose named Deepset under development for 3” installations up to 400m. The Prieska mine shaft challenge was a golden opportunity to test this new concept hose, as not many boreholes are ever drilled to these depths. Challenges met Depth wasn’t the only chal- lenge we faced on site, however. The disused mine still had its old concrete headworks with a 500mm thick slab cast over the shaft to prevent accidents. This proved cumbersome to drill through to create a large enough hole, but the team succeeded, and we were able to move ahead with the Deepset installation. Our arrival on site was met with much excitement, and tasks were quickly allocated to teams to speed up the process. While everyone present was familiar with steel pipes, none had worked with a flexible riser of this nature and especially this length before, and 16 SABI | OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2019