The use of mine water balances to optimise water management in opencast and underground collieries in the Witbank coalfields of South Africa

[摘要] Mine water management continues to become ever more important with the continualincrease and expansion of coal mining operations within already water stressed andcontaminated catchment areas in South Africa. Mine water balances are one of the mosteffective methods to assist in optimising the management of water reticulation and storage inopencast and underground collieries. Before developing a water balance, it is cruciallyimportant to have a clear understanding of the parameters that play a role in the rechargeand water make into the mining operations. Different methods of data gathering may beemployed in order to develop the conceptual model for a mine water balance. A literaturereview is done in order to obtain generic values relevant to the entirety of the Witbank CoalField and a case study is done in order to obtain site specific parameters. The case study isdone for a typical mine which included both opencast and underground sections in the premining,operational and post closure phases of mining Both generic and site specificparameters is used in order to create three mine water balance scenarios. The waterbalance scenarios investigated indicate the sensitivity and importance of collecting accurateand representative data when developing a mine water balance. The mine water balancecalculations together with the associated storage capacity assessments for each of the mineworkings is used to assess and highlight the sensitivity of the input data used as well as toindicate the importance of ensuring that accurate and representative data is used whenundertaking water balances as a water management tool.

[发布机构] University of the Free State