OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT
Entrained salts can accumulate
and harden at a surprising rate and eventually affect the function of wastewater tanks
REFRESHING APPROACH
from the wastewater passing through the weirs, baffles and troughs of clarifier and thickener tanks. Te salt build-up can accumulate at a surprising rate and quickly harden to halt the function of the weirs, tanks, and related equipment until it is removed.
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Tis impediment to mining production occurs when accumulated powdery salt silicates or carbonates are entrained in the wastewater. Te water becomes highly oxygenated in the clarifier or thickener and the material hardens, turning into essentially submerged stalactites often in less than a day, according to Brent Gill, CEO of GillTeq, a USA-based manufacturer of OSHA-compliant, automated cleaning systems. “When a 0.5m or 1m clarifier channel fills with hardened salt, mine operators have to physically remove the material
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n the mining industry, operators have long resigned themselves to the laborious and dangerous process of manually cleaning accumulated salts
When it comes to mining wastewater, the time has come to eliminate dangerous manual clarifier weir cleaning
using high pressure washers, icebreakers and chisels,” says Gill. “It is important to keep those weirs clean. Otherwise, the tank stops working completely and it can take days to remove all the accumulated material from the weir and the trough.” To break up and remove the hardened salt, two workers are typically required,
often for several hours per day. Tese workers climb into the tanks, where they are exposed to wastewater that contains bacteria, viruses and other hazardous substances. Slippery surfaces have also caused operators to fall into tanks, where sharp metal edges and other features cause injury and even death. Ten there is the simple matter of the cost for this labour, not to mention the difficulty of finding qualified operators in the first place, for what is essentially a menial task. According to Gill, the reason manual
washdowns still occur today is simply that the mining industry has always done it this way, and in many cases is not aware that more effective solutions exist that are cost-effective, installed easily and fully automated. “Today, there are solutions that
An automated clarifier/thickener cleaning system such as GillTeq’s WeirWasher can effectively improve safety and efficiency
use pressurised water to break up salt accumulation for easy removal from weirs, baffles and launders of just about any configuration of clarifier or thickener
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