Instrumentation of Mine Waste Facilities
Providing Critical Data for Understanding Risks and Optimizing Management Strategies
At HydroEQ, we understand that one of the biggest challenges in geochemistry is scaling results from lab tests to full-scale mine waste facilities. As Skya Fawcett, Director of Geochemistry at HydroEQ, explains, "While lab-based tests provide valuable insights into the geochemical behavior of mine waste materials, applying these findings to a facility containing millions of tonnes of rock or tailings can be a challenge, particularly when considering field-specific variables such as local climate conditions”.
Matt Neuner, a Senior Geochemist at HydroEQ, suggests that instrumenting mine waste facilities can help address this challenge and support successful mine closure. "By collecting data from a pilot or full-scale facility, we can better understand the evolution of water quality and the release of constituents from on-site mine waste, which can help reduce risks to mine operators and the environment, and achieve more effective closure outcomes," he notes.
An effectively designed instrumentation program can measure and assess various physical and chemical conditions within a mine waste facility, including temperature, oxygen ingress and consumption, moisture content, gas flow dynamics, water infiltration, and constituent release. These data can then be used to help answer important questions such as:
What geochemical reactions are occurring, and how do they affect the release or attenuation of metals, acidity, salinity, and organic contaminants?
How does water move through the facility, and how does the water balance affect constituent loading and release to downstream environments?
How do gases like oxygen and carbon dioxide move through the facility, and do their dynamics encourage acid rock drainage or metal leaching (ARD/ML) reactions? Alternatively, could the facility act as a sink for greenhouse gas emissions?
What is the thermal regime of the mine waste facility, and how does it influence reaction rates and water flow dynamics?
How do conditions within the facility change over time; are seasonal variations relevant to the overall geochemical behaviour of the facility, and will constituent release rates gradually decrease over time?
How do management practices, such as lift heights, traffic layers and/or compaction, affect reactions and water quality? How likely is it that a reclamation cover will be adequate to achieve the desired closure outcomes, or will an engineered cover be successful?
Continuous on-site monitoring at a facility-scale can result in more accurate projections of future behavior and implementation of more effective management strategies where required. At HydroEQ, we are experts in designing and executing tailored instrumentation programs for mine waste facilities. Our team has extensive experience across various scales, from smaller-scale pilot plots to full scale facilities, including our staff’s involvement in instrumenting the Diavik waste rock test piles—one of the industry’s pioneering projects. Our expertise includes geochemistry, constituent transport, gas flow dynamics, and innovative instrumentation techniques, including using geophysical methods to monitor moisture and constituent dynamics.
By providing detailed, on-site data, our mine waste facility instrumentation programs can play a key role in the assessment of potential environmental effects, forecasting potential risks, optimizing mine waste management strategies, and closure planning. HydroEQ is committed to helping our mining clients navigate the challenges they face with targeted, effective solutions.