Review of Cost Effective Systems to Minimise Water Losses by Evaporation from Minesite Process Water Storage (AMIRA P881) (2C1)

Project Status: Complete
Project Participants: BHP Billiton, CSIRO, Newmont, OneSteel, AMIRA, EWL Sciences
Project Leader: Bruce Fraser (AMIRA) and Tony Milnes (EWL Sciences)

There is increasing interest in water use efficiency within the mining industry, which like other water users, is faced with reduced supply, increasing costs and stakeholder demands for greater environmental and corporate stewardship. One avenue for increasing water efficiency is to reduce evaporative losses from mine site water storages. This project reviewed the current scientific understanding of evaporative
processes and the available and emerging technologies for reducing evaporation in terms of their applicability to the mining industry.

The objective of this project was to identify cost effective approaches/system for minimising evaporative water losses from process water storage.

The research objectives were to:

• Explain clearly the driving factors and controls on evaporation from open water bodies such as lakes, dams and retention ponds.
• List the various strategies that are currently known to be used, trialled, planned or hypothesies to be possible to limit evaporation from water bodies in a variety fo circumstances .
• Place this knowledge in the context of mining and mineral processing operations.
• Explore a set of practical options for reducing evaporation from such storages.
• Suggest optimal strategies for alleviating evaporation from present storages and design principles for future storages.