How We Bypassed the Pitfalls of Open Pit Mining
Although essential to life, water can be one of the biggest thorns in an engineer’s side. In open pit mining, groundwater flow is unpredictable and can significantly reduce the stability of pit walls.
Horizontal drains have become one of the most effective methods for dewatering pit walls and slope embankments, but it can be difficult to measure their success. Two common practices for quantifying the impact of horizontal drains include observing a gradual decrease in flow from the drains over time and using piezometers to measure water pressure in the slope.
Unfortunately, these methods pose their own limitations, often requiring permanent power infrastructure, protection from the elements or continued physical access for engineers to retrieve data. There is currently no product on the market for measuring horizontal drain flow rates that can be installed without these requirements. Rather than accepting this problem and attempting to work around it, JEPCO decided to face it head-on and create a solution.
Jay Sorensen, lead research and development engineer on this project, and his fellow JEPCO engineers conducted extensive research on current flowmeter types. They used existing technologies to build a low-power flowmeter and data logger unit that enables wireless data acquisition. Its design allows for multiple rounds of water collection brought on by rain and events of freezing and thawing within the rocky walls of an open pit mine.
Horizon Flow’s hardware includes a backup battery that lasts for two years and a solar charging system that can extend the device’s battery life for up to five years after receiving a minimum of only one hour of direct sunlight each day. It also contains a central data collection site that aggregates wireless communications while presenting data in a human-readable format.
This innovative solution provides us with a better understanding of how surface water impacts horizontal drains’ flow rates during seasonal changes. The ability to utilize flow rates that take rainfall, snowfall and timing of freeze/thaw data into account when creating predictive models will improve our hydrologic and geotechnical understanding of mine wall failures and how to prevent them. JEPCO’s engineers think outside the box and dare to solve problems no other company has before. How can JEPCO help solve your problems?
