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:
Comments
5 comments
Hi Jason,
I have a question with entrained water volume estimation. Have you had any experiences where the volume of water entrained in the impounded tailing at each timestep is negative? I'm thinking in the condition that you have a high solids density (ρd = 4.266 t/m3).
Looking forward to hearing from you
I don't understand what you mean by a negative volume of water entrained. If the rate is negative doesn't it simply mean that water is being pushed out (by consolidation)? You simply need to represent this as a withdrawal from the entrained water stock. Or are you trying to represent something else?
Hi Rick,
Thanks for yours response.
Please correct me if I am wrong.
I was referring to the equation used to calculate entrained water volume. The formula is Total Impounded Volume * (1-Density in Model/(Gs Specific Gravity Solids*Density Water)). Let's say the density in Model is 4.26 tonne/m3 (a constant) and the other variables remain the same. This would give a negative volume of water entrained.
But the other variables most certainly cannot remain the same! The "Density in the Model" is the total bulk density. If this is very high, it means that the specific gravity of the solids must also be high (you can't just keep this constant; it has to reflect whatever solid you are dealing with). That is, the equation is
Volume = Total Volume (1 - Bulk Density/Solid Density). If the Bulk Density is high (due to the type of solid), then the Solid Density must also be high. Since the Bulk Density consists of solid plus water (and water has a lower density than the solid), the fraction is always less than 1.
Hi Rick,
Thanks for clarifying this for me :)
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