Asia's Longest Dewatering Geotube®- TenCate Geosynthetics Asia

The challenge

The rising demand for supersized Geotube® dewatering units capable of handling extreme volumes of mine waste sediments and slurries is the driving force for TenCate Geosynthetics strive in innovation and engineering excellence. Mine owners and plant operators are constantly demanding for more efficient and productive outputs. No two mine sites or operative problem is the same and nearly every project requires a bespoke solution.

It is a challenge TenCate has embraced with vigor and enthusiasm that has resulted in the capability to deliver bigger and better Geotube® options designed to meet or exceed asset owner expectations.

The mine site in question required solutions to dewater high volumes of slurry from sediment ponds that were at the limits of their capacity. Lack of land space prevented construction of additional pond capacity and operational water demand required sediment free water be circulated back into the process. Solutions proposed had to be capable of dewatering exceptionally high volumes of slurry within a constrained time period and be shown to be cost feasible and operationally functional in an extremely remote site location.

The solution

With extensive experience working in remote mine sites across the world, TenCate dewatering engineers quickly realized the demands of the project and eliminated the option of using standard sized Geotube® units. The only option was to manufacture Geotube® units of at least 100m or longer in length in order to meet both the dewatered solids targets but also fit within a constrained laydown pad size.

The design of the units had to be such that the system would accept the volumes required to be pumped in an efficient way and that water discharged from the tubes could be immediately circulated back into the process. Calculations showed that installation of such large tubes would significantly reduce operational costs compared to costs associated with a larger number of smaller Geotube® units.

The Geotube® unit with a circumference of 36.6 m and length of 101 m was chosen for this project with a total of 6 units required to process the 160,000 m3 of slurry pumped at a rate of 550 m3/hour for 24 hours per day generating 20,000 m3 of dry cake.

Manufacturing such large Geotube® units was another challenge met by innovative fabric production and tube assembly techniques no other company can match. The Geotube® units were also required to be packaged and transported to site in a way that facilitated easy handling and deployment on site using unskilled labor. A record-breaking operation in more ways than one, but one that paves the way for delivery of supersized Geotube® units capable of dewatering extremely large volumes of mine and industrial slurries going forward.

The performance

This project has the distinction of being the longest Geotube® dewatering project ever undertaken in Asia. The project has resulted in a wealth of knowledge on the economics of extreme large scale Geotube® dewatering that can be applied to other high volume mine and industrial slurry dewatering challenges.

Further information on this and other large scale Geotube® dewatering projects can be obtained by contacting TenCate Geosynthetics Asia.