Basson Jack Adriaan, Broekman André, Jacobsz Schalk Willem
Department of Civil Engineering, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa.
HardwareX. 2021 Aug 13;10:e00221. doi: 10.1016/j.ohx.2021.e00221. eCollection 2021 Oct.
Tailings dams are large, often self-contained, storage facilities of mine residue. On self-contained tailings dams the tailings material itself is used to raise the containment embankments holding newly deposited residue. To develop the necessary strength, it is essential that material must dry out sufficiently. Despite substantial advancements in the field of instrumentation, these parameters are rarely measured on tailings dams and their evolution over time is poorly understood. Understanding the role of pore water suction and water content evolution over time can benefit from the installation of sensors and data acquisition systems (DAQ) capable of continuously monitoring these parameters. Such monitoring remains difficult and expensive owing to the challenges of measuring negative water pressures and the often-remote locations and harsh operating environments typical of mining operations. This paper describes the development, testing and validation of a low-cost DAQ for the measurement of the unsaturated pore pressure regime in a platinum tailings dam located in the Limpopo province of South Africa. The Tailings Dam DAQ (referred to as TD-DAQ) is designed to measure the negative pore pressure, moisture content and temperature in fine-grained material over extended periods of time. These measurements are stored on the DAQ and transmitted in parallel using new wireless network communications technologies (Sigfox) suited to remote, battery powered applications. The successful deployment of the TD-DAQ presents a real-time, low-cost instrumentation solution to improve the efficiency of condition monitoring of tailings storage facilities, contributing to a reduction in the probability of failure events.
尾矿坝是大型的、通常自成体系的矿山废渣储存设施。在自成体系的尾矿坝中，尾矿材料本身被用于加高容纳新沉积废渣的围堤。为了形成必要的强度，材料必须充分干燥。尽管在仪器仪表领域取得了重大进展，但这些参数在尾矿坝上很少被测量，而且人们对其随时间的演变了解甚少。通过安装能够持续监测这些参数的传感器和数据采集系统（DAQ），有助于了解孔隙水吸力和含水量随时间的变化情况。由于测量负水压力存在挑战，而且采矿作业通常地处偏远、作业环境恶劣，这种监测仍然困难且成本高昂。本文介绍了一种低成本DAQ的开发、测试和验证，该DAQ用于测量位于南非林波波省的一个铂尾矿坝中的非饱和孔隙压力状态。尾矿坝DAQ（简称TD - DAQ）旨在长时间测量细粒材料中的负孔隙压力、含水量和温度。这些测量数据存储在DAQ上，并使用适用于远程、电池供电应用的新型无线网络通信技术（Sigfox）并行传输。TD - DAQ的成功部署提供了一种实时、低成本的仪器解决方案，以提高尾矿储存设施状态监测的效率，有助于降低故障事件发生的概率。
