The treatment of mine water has evolved in the past 20 years. In the past these operations relied on large teams of maintenance & operational staff to carry out time consuming manual measurement activities to ensure that plant and networks were operating safely.
Technological innovation has introduced a variety connected devices and systems, this provides plant owners with the ability to modernize their water treatment plants for remote operation to help meet market demands and increase operational productivity, accuracy, and efficiency.
Population growth, industrialisation and climate change intensifies water scarcity. Communities across the world have an urgent requirement for safe, reliable, and affordable water and wastewater (W/WW) treatment. The demand for W/WW treatment is non-cyclical Governments, municipalities, private sector as well as the Mining industry will continue to invest in new and existing infrastructure to meet the increase in regulation requirements.
Mining is a water-intensive process, with water being used for mineral processing, dust suppression, slurry transport and employees’ needs. 10% of the mining industry’s CAPEX is spent on water-related infrastructure according to the International Council on Mining & Metals (ICMM) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC).
The primary challenge for mine operators is water treatment, and ensuring they find a balance between guaranteeing compliant effluent quality whilst minimizing costs. Mine water treatment plays a crucial role in mining operations, whether in guaranteeing a ready supply of fresh water for workforces, or in support of vital processes such as separation. However, procurement and treatment of the needed volumes of water are not the only challenges. Treating wastewater for safe discharge is equally complex. All of these challenges are compounded when operating in a remote location.
The Endress+Hauser portfolio offers multiple solutions for mine water treatment. Endress+Hauser offers a broad range of sensor instrumentation to support optimal mine water processes, from monitoring of desalination of extracted water, to industrial water preparation, to treatment of water for discharge.
We believe that the Mine operators should look to the Internet of Things (IoT) for technologies and solutions tailored for the improvement of their operations. The IoT landscape connects digital objects such as sensors and flow meters to the internet, turning them into ‘smart’ assets that can communicate with users and application systems. This allows for more efficient process control and optimised network management. General water monitoring operations that were previously manual and inefficient can now be automated, continuously reporting on their own status in real time.
Endress+Hauser is a partner who understands the needs and demands of the water in the mining industry. We have made it our priority to create practical solutions to meet your needs while supporting optimal operation on your end. Netilion Water Network Insights is one of our cloud-based solutions that is certified and is a vendor-independent IIoT ecosystem. This solution helps users continuously monitor and improve their processes and procedures – whether in the field or in the control center.
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Netilion Water Network Insights enables you to optimize your processes across the entire water cycle while collecting all important measuring variables and displaying the data in a customizable visualization. This allows you to react quickly to incidents and save on operating and energy costs.
Water’s journey is endless. It often travels long distances through huge pipelines in remote areas without any other infrastructure. To guarantee sufficient water quantity and quality, active management is needed.
This is where our battery-powered Promag W 800 makes your life easier. It provides everything you need to maintain full compliance with legal requirements while increasing your operational efficiency. Whether in urban or remote areas, in a desert or in the tropics –the accurate measuring and billing of drinking and process water consumption is becoming increasingly important. Endress+Hauser has developed the new Promag W 800 with battery power, precisely for such applications. This electromagnetic flowmeter allows versatile and autonomous use even at locations without power supply:
Water quality monitoring is also an important aspect for mining operators. It consists of several key parameters (pH, turbidity,etc) to ensure treated wastewater meets environmental guidelines. These parameters are either measured online by process instrumentation or by manual grab sampling, which may examine a composite sample over a weekly period. Most modern treatment plants will have automated online monitoring systems at the outlet of their treatment plant. With ad hoc or manual-based measurement, it’s easy to miss a pollution event which may cause environmental damage.
Ready to transform your water network with IoT?
IoT technology solutions like Netilion can provide enormous benefits that were not previously possible.
The volume of information that can now be transmitted is truly astounding, as are the advanced data visualisation solutions that decrypt this information and turn it into valuable outcomes for a wide variety of mining stakeholders.
Netilion Water Network Insights ensures full transparency in mining water treatment around the clock and can be used for reliable monitoring of water quantity as well as other parameters like pressure, temperature and level. Netilion Water Network Insights connects all levels of a water treatment system and offers service providers and water associations a tailor-made solution from a single source. These include everything from field devices, components for data transfer, data recording, data archiving and data evaluation as well as unique forecasting functions.
In an environment where water security is no longer a guarantee, IoT technology has been proven to boost operational efficiency and provide smart investment decisions. As mining operators make leaps and strides in their use of IoT technology, we encourage you to partner with Endress+Hauser and not be left behind.
