Mining Waste Flow Meter – This article discusses what flow meters are suitable for mining waste processes. Mining waste in question in the form of overburden, gangue, tailings mixed with water (mud).
It’s no secret that mining can generate a lot of waste. This is evident by a quick look at each mining operation and the scale on which they operate. In fact, in most cases, you will probably only see actual mine waste because most of the actual operations take place underground.
Mine wastewater found in mine lagoons can cause problems because they contain hazardous materials that can be released into the environment if not handled properly. Some of these hazardous materials include heavy metals, metalloids, radioactive waste, acidic water, and process chemicals.
Mining Waste Flow Meter (Overbourden)
Residual rock, or overburden, refers to the mass of soil and early rocks that are often taken to reach valuable mineral deposits in mining operations. Typically, for every ton of ore mined, 5 tons of overburden must be moved. Overburden does not undergo any chemical processes, but still has to be removed to access the ore.
Overburden is usually managed by stacking it on a surface near a mining site in an area that will not interfere with ongoing operations. Transporting large volumes of material is expensive, so a layer of cover is stored nearby and is often used for land revegeation at the time of mine closure.
Mining Waste Flow Meter (Gangue)
Gangue is a worthless stone or material that is tightly mixed with valuable materials to be processed. The separation of minerals from gangue is called mineral processing. Often times, inefficient processing methods can result in gangue that still stores large amounts of valuable minerals. As mineral values increase, it can even be advantageous to reprocess gangue to extract additional minerals that may have been lost during the first processing.
Tailing
Tailings are finely ground rocks and other mineral residues as a result of mineral processing. Because of the way minerals are processed, tailings can contain concentrations of processing chemicals. This can make mine tailings an environmental issue, so proper transportation and disposal is essential. As a result, the next step is to pump mine tailings using a mud pump into the tailings pool. Tailings ponds are sedimentation reservoirs that are closed by dams and coatings to capture and store waste.
Flow Meter
Waste flow meters are usually applied in dirty areas and extreme acidity both acidic and wet, therefore the type of matrial flow meter for body sensors using stainless steel or non metal to be more durable and not rusty. If using stainless steel simply use SUS 304 and for non metal can also be used PP or PVC.
In many applications of flow meters installed in waste disposal lines that do not use pumps or rely only on gravity often arises the problem of accuracy of flow rate and totalizer measurement values therefore to get around this can be done by modifying the installation of flow meters on the output pipe or input so that the accuracy of measurements by flow meter sensors is as small as possible.
Types of Wastewater Flow Meters
For wastewater flow meters that can be said in the category is safe and suitable for the characteristics of dirty wastewater, contains a lot of solid (overburden, gangue), and may be very corrosive and abrasive, very large sewage pipes and streams that use pumps at high pressures and streams that rely only on the nature of gravity or even open flow such as channels are:
- Magnetic Flow Meter
- Ultrasonic Flow meter
- Open channel flow meter
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Electromagnetic flow meter is a type of flow meter that has the highest population for flowmeters that are used to measure fluid flow either in the form of water or other fluids both corosive, dirty and mud flow.
Magnetic flow meters are most widely used in water and waste and chemical flow measurement applications. Magnetic flow meter is perfect if used for waste fluids even for mud and sulurry.
Because of the characteristics of using sensors and no moving or rotating components in the flow sensor, it is quite safe if the measured liquid is covered in dirt or garbage.