Underground Dewatering Solutions

Underground de-watering is complex on a number of levels, a few key areas are; limited space, power resource and location. Massive input is required to design an efficient underground mine dewatering system and is no mere feat. Infrastructure such as rising mains, drain holes, sumps, pump capacities, in and out flows all need to align to ensure the system works effectively and is able to cope with the varying requirements that are typical in an underground mine environment. Typical underground mine dewatering systems have many facets that make up the system in its entirety, these predominately include sumps or (reception pits) which are located at various levels of the mine which allows water & rock dust to flow into or pumped from drilling activities at the face as the mine goes deeper, sumps also capture any water seepage or overflows that have occurred throughout the mine. These sumps must be pumped out regularly to prevent flooding which can pose both safety risks and loss in production to the mining staff.

Water slimes are predominately then pumped into smaller Underground Pump Stations or as otherwise known as Underground Dewatering Fish Tanks, Underground Dewatering Pods, fishtanks or Travelling Decline Pump Systems (Traveller).these smaller pump stations usually comprise of a relatively small hopper varying between 2-10,000 litres and a high head pumping system to move the water as far as possible. Commonly Underground Fish.

Tanks will cope with inflows of up to 20L/s and pump approximately 320M Head. Smaller pump stations are often “daisy-chained” up the decline to a major Underground Mine Pump Station which will then pump directly to another major underground pump station or directly to the surface where the water slurry settles in large reservoirs for reuse. The limiting factor with most travelling decline pump stations is low flow rates, to overcome this issue some miners opt to use a Submersible Pump Hopper which as its name would suggest is a Pump Hopper with a large submersible pump moving larger volumes albeit not as far.