Integrated Storage Facility — A New Concept for Mine Waste Storage

• A new concept for mine waste storage called Integrated Storage Facility has been touted in places where managing mine waste is extremely challenging. Such a concept has been conceived to be pioneered for a massive copper-gold project in Papua New Guinea, where rugged tropical terrains, tough climatic and geological conditions make building of conventional mine waste storage facility one of the biggest challenges in the country. The developer of Frieda River Copper-Gold project in Papua New Guinea, PanAust, plans to create a huge man-made lake, occupying an area of 12,700 hectares and perched between several valleys at an elevation of 400 to 800 m above sea level. This Integrated Storage Facility will serve two functions: (i) submarine environment for underwater storage of mine tailings and waste rock and (ii) hydro-electric facility to power the mine and excess power for export. The facility is planned to hold 2.13 billion cubic meters of tailings and waste rock over the life of the mine, and 0.04 billion cubic meters of water. Since this infrastructure is neither a classical hydro-power dam, nor a tailings dam, the design of the infrastructure was difficult to benchmark against existing hydro-power dams and tailings dams. In view of the nature of the infrastructure the government of East Sepik Province, a stake holder in the project, engaged a team of engineers to carry out high level review of the design cncept of the infrastructure considering the risks and consequences. This paper is the result of this review and highlights some of the challenges facing such a concept. 

Ämnesord

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Naturresursteknik -- Mineral- och gruvteknik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Environmental Engineering -- Mineral and Mine Engineering (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Integrated storage facility

mine waste

tailings

underwater storage

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)