FEATURE

FLUID
HANDLING

An underground dewatering
pumping system.

Moving the muck

and the mire
Cost and efciency are king in every aspect of a mines operation, and realising these goals
quickly is a keen motivator. However, a long-term game plan may be the key to keeping
costs down when it comes to the dreaded task of dewatering. By Andrew Snelling

ining engineering consultancy

IMEC has reported recent
success at some mine sites by
pursuing a surface dewatering
program over an underground one,
delivering longer term efficiencies which
mitigate more frequent maintenance.
While the company acknowledges that
the most effective option will differ from site
to site, IMEC senior dewatering engineer
Robert Markoski believes operators should
at least entertain the idea of settling pumped
water on the surface.
The bigger the surface area that you
can do it in, the more settling you have,
Markoski explained.
If youre on the surface you can build a
huge dam and you get a lot more settling,
whereas if you do it underground youre
limited for space and every metre you
develop is a huge cost.
While settling water underground
spoils operators for choice in terms of the
availability of various pumps capable of
pumping clean water, the capital cost of
excavating an underground area can be
considerable.
Alternatively, surface settling areas are
much cheaper and easier to construct, but
the pumps available to transport water with
a high solids content from underground to

www.miningmonthly.com

the surface are limited and can require large

amounts of maintenance.
A lot of people flat out say it will cost
too much to do all this maintenance work,
but weve found on a couple of mines that
actually know, if you look at the long-term,
even though youre replacing the internals
of these pumps more often it is a lot cheaper
to do it that way than constantly developing
underground and doing your settling there,
Markoski said.
There is that option there and it should
be looked at and have a cost benefit analysis
done.
According to Markoski, IMEC have had
success using centrifugal slurry pumps to
pump dirty water to the surface for settling.
The company has found that the robust
and simple design of the pumps makes the
more frequent maintenance needed, easier to
conduct.
By utilising these pumps, we are able to
design very efficient pumping systems, which
require little or no settling of solids matter
underground, Markoski explained.
By comparison, Markoski said, clean
water pumps often needed to be sent back to
the supplier for maintenance, which could
be costly and time-consuming where the
supplier was not present domestically.
Another advantage of settling above

ground is the availability of a wider range of

equipment for maintaining a settling system.
In addition to this, using equipment above
ground limits traffic underground.
By removing the need for vehicles to
transport mud out of the underground
settlement ponds to the surface, operators
can free up valuable underground real estate
for loaders used to transport ore, directly
leading to revenue.
The issue is that when youre settling
underground, all those solids and materials
that do settle you have to get those things
out of there, Markoski said.
So youre tying up equipment and it could
potentially cause delays in your decline
where other vehicles cant pass because
youre using this vehicle to remove mud and
gunk from underground.
IMEC co-director and senior engineer
Martyn Abbott summed up the advantages of
a surface settling program rather succinctly.
By implementing a primary dewatering
system that can pump unsettled mine water
direct to surface, a significant operational
and capital saving can be realised by the
mine by eliminating the need for large
underground excavations for settling
sumps and utilising larger or more efficient
earthmoving equipment for treatment on
surface, he said.

June 2015 AMM 77