During these tough economical times where mining costs have escalated excessively it has become very profitable for mining houses to recover latent minerals still of value from their old dormant tailings dams. In order to do this, hydraulic re-mining is the best solution to recover these minerals. High pressure water is used to monitor the tailings back to the plant by means of high pressure monitor guns. This method is also very environmentally friendly where these old facilities’ footprint is rehabilitated afterwards to as close as possible to its original state.
The pulpified tailings are send to the process plant for further extraction at the required tonnage production rate and density. The flow of high pressure water through the monitoring guns may be manipulated in order to cater for a variety of cutting face heights and optimum production rate and flow.
The monitored tailings usually report to a transfer pump station where the oversized material and vegetation is screened out to ensure the optimum product that is send to the mine.
Depending on each projects’ deliverables a selection has to be made of which type of monitoring gun to use. They usually are in the range of from 2” to 6” guns. Once the size is known according to the required production rate, the gun may be skid mounted or self-propelled track guns. These can also then be remotely operated to ensure utmost safety to the gun operators. NAMCEP provides the whole range of monitoring guns mentioned above.
