May 2019 - Modeling Consolidation of Slurries: A Water Balance Approach

Presented by: Guest speaker, Nicholas Brink with Stantec

A slurry is, simply put, a granular material mixed with enough water so that the mechanical behavior of the material resembles that of a fluid. Common examples include drilling mud, paper mill pulp, cement mix, water treatment underflow sludge, etc. Fluid-like slurries are commonplace in the mining industry and primarily in the form of tailing waste left over after the target minerals have been removed from parent rock or soil. These slurries are often disposed of by piping them into engineered reservoirs (Tailing Storage Facilities, or TSFs) for long-term storage. In a situation such as this, previously deposited slurry becomes weighted by the new slurry placed on top of it. The added pressure leads to consolidation, a process whereby entrained water is released (thus the overall slurry volume decreases) and the net slurry density increases. Consolidation can be a highly time-dependent process and, if the overall slurry volume change is substantial, can have a proportionally substantial impact on the design and operation of a storage facility. GoldSim is an ideal environment in which to model material and water balances, and to simulate the impact of slurry consolidation within a storage facility.

This webinar provides a high-level overview of the principles of consolidation and discusses some general procedures for estimating slurry density over time. The webinar focuses on using the time-dependent density to simulate consolidation (and its effects on storage facility design/operation) using GoldSim. The methods and techniques provided in this webinar are applicable to consolidation of nearly any type of slurry and are not restricted to the mining industry.

Below is a video recording of the webinar presentation:

Download the model files used for this presentation: