Tailings ponds are essential supporting facilities for tailings sedimentation, water storage and flood regulation in mines. Long-term operation leads to continuous accumulation of fine sand, mine sludge and suspended solids, resulting in reduced storage capacity, blocked flood discharge pipelines and increased pressure on dam bodies, which seriously endangers mine flood control safety and ecological environment. Traditional manual dredging and large-scale mechanical construction feature large water disturbance, incomplete desilting and prominent secondary pollution. Targeting the typical working conditions of tailings ponds including deep water, high sediment concentration, fine particle size and high operational risks, this paper proposes a professional, safe, efficient and environmentally friendly silt treatment solution.
1. On-site Survey and Accurate Sediment Investigation
A comprehensive on-site survey shall be conducted in the early stage of treatment to accurately detect the silt thickness, sedimentation scope, tailings particle proportion and underwater terrain of the tailings pond, and inspect blockage hazards of flood culverts and spillways. In accordance with reservoir capacity design standards and flood control requirements, precise dredging areas and reasonable dredging depth are defined to avoid dam disturbance and reservoir structure damage caused by blind construction.
2. Adopt Unmanned Equipment to Avoid High Operational Risks
Tailings ponds are characterized by deep water, steep slopes and complex underwater environments, making manual underwater operations strictly prohibited. This solution adopts remote-controlled hydraulic dredging robots for full-process unmanned construction. The man-machine separated remote operation eliminates the need for personnel to wade or enter confined spaces, fundamentally preventing safety accidents such as drowning, slope collapse and equipment sinking, and fully adapting to high-risk tailings pond working conditions.
3. Hydraulic Cutter-suction Construction for Efficient Dredging
Aiming at the characteristics of fine-grained mine sludge and consolidated tailings, the equipment adopts high-torque hydraulic cutters to break solidified sediment layers, and cooperates with slurry pumps for closed negative-pressure suction, realizing integrated sludge crushing, suction and conveying. It can continuously treat high-concentration mineral slurry with low blockage risk, ensuring uniform and thorough dredging. This effectively restores the effective storage capacity of tailings ponds, unclogs flood discharge channels and improves flood passing capacity.
4. Closed Construction to Prevent Secondary Water Pollution
The entire construction adopts a fully closed pipeline mud conveying mode, with no slurry overflow and minimal water disturbance, preventing water quality deterioration caused by suspended tailings diffusion. The construction process will not damage the pond bottom base and dam slope protection structure, fully complying with mine environmental protection construction standards and solving the defects of mud-water mixing and pollution diffusion in traditional dredging.
5. Compliant Sludge Disposal and Resource Utilization
The dredged tailings and sludge are centrally transported to the sedimentation area through pipelines. After dehydration and solid-liquid separation treatment, the dried tailings can be recycled and reused, and the wastewater can be recycled. This realizes harmless and resource-based sludge treatment, reduces the pressure of solid waste stacking, and meets the construction requirements of green mines.
Summary
This tailings pond silt treatment solution focuses on accurate survey, unmanned construction, efficient dredging, environmentally friendly operation and resource recycling. Replacing traditional extensive construction methods with intelligent dredging robots, it thoroughly solves common problems such as tailings pond sediment blockage, insufficient storage capacity and weak flood control capacity. Meanwhile, it ensures construction safety and strictly controls ecological pollution, serving as an optimal solution for daily operation and maintenance, flood control treatment and ecological rectification of modern mine tailings ponds.
