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Roy Hill Iron Ore Optimizes Water Infrastructure Design and Operations for AUD 10 Billion Mining Facility

Roy Hill Iron Ore Optimizes Water Infrastructure Design and Operations for AUD 10 Billion Mining Facility
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Roy Hill Iron Ore Optimizes Water Infrastructure Design and Operations for AUD 10 Billion Mining Facility - 1

CASE STUDY Project Summary Organization: Roy Hill Iron Ore Location: Pilbara, Australia Project Objective: • Reduce costs for Australia's largest iron ore mining facility by implementing optimal water infrastructure. • Meet the varying demands of multiple end users while preserving limited good quality groundwater. Products used: WaterGEMS Roy Hill Iron Ore Optimizes Water Infrastructure Design and Operations for AUD 10 Billion Mining Facility WaterGEMS® Hydraulic Model to Save Millions over 20-Year Life of Mine Fast Facts • Roy Hill Iron Ore is implementing Australia's largest mining facility, including water supply and dewatering operations covering 300 square meters. • To reduce operational expenditures, Roy Hill's water management team is using WaterGEMS to model the entire integrated network under greatly varying conditions over the LOM. • Using the hydraulic model for scenario analysis enabled the team to optimize pipeline sizes, and other factors to minimize costs amid changing mine network. WaterGEMS ensures uninterrupted mining operations, saving potential lost revenue of approximately AUD 20 million per day. Reducing operating pressure allowed for the use of smaller pipes in 80 percent of the system, decreasing the environment footprint of the mine, and contributing to saving AUD 1.6 million within the first two years, and AUD 16 million over the LOM. With a targeted 20 percent reduction in fuel, Roy Hill would save AUD 2.4 million in burnt diesel over the LOM, the equivalent of taking 2,100 vehicles off the road for 12 months. An Evolving, Flexible Dewatering and Water Supply Network In the Pilbara region of Western Australia, 1,200 kilometers northeast of Perth, Roy Hill Iron Ore (Roy Hill) is developing an open pit, bulk mining facility capable of processing 55 megatons of iron ore annually. Set to be the country's largest iron ore mining operation, the AUD 10 billion project includes a water supply and dewatering network spanning 300 square kilometers that needs continuous adapting to meet the changing mining and ore processing requirements over the 20-year life of the mine (LOM). Roy Hill's engineering services department's water management team is responsible for planning, design, construction, and operations of the site's raw water supply and dewatering system. The team is challenged to meet consumer requirements, preserve good quality water, and ensure dewatering and dust suppression objectives are met, while minimizing any surplus water disposal in a rapidly fluctuating mining environment. With iron ore prices drastically falling over the past several years from an all time high of AUD 180 per ton in 2011 to AUD 55 in 2016, Roy Hill faces increasing pressure to reduce capital and operational expenditures through optimal water management. "Water management is so important on-site that it was listed as number two on a list of 47 conditions that funding lenders put together," commented Craig Nelson, engineer in water planning, Roy Hill. The integrated water infrastructure at the mine currently includes 24 high water quality production bores for final ore processing and potable purposes, six lower water quality separate bores for ore processing make-up and dust suppression supplies, and 49 dewatering bores. Over the LOM there will be two distinct dewatering systems, raw and saline, with the raw dewatering system estimated to peak at 105 active bores, and the saline network estimated to peak at 75 bores. With no permanent power supply system, the bores all operate on diesel generators and during peak operations there will be an estimated 220 kilometers of HDPE pipeline ranging in diameter up to DN800. With an AUD 500 million initiative to reduce costs over the 20-year LOM, the water management team aims to optimize the design of future systems to reduce the potential size and rating of infrastructure elements on the capital expenditure side, and reduce fueling and servicing costs on the operational side. To implement a cost-effective water supply and dewatering system that ensures the water table always remains at least 1 meter below the pit floor amid the highly dynamic mining environment, without any impact or delay to the mine plan and operations, the team required a comprehensive water distribution and analysis solution. Integrated Hydraulic Modeling Solution Using WaterGEMS, the team designed a fully integrated, mapped hydraulic model that provides a detailed representation of the water system, containing all key items including bores and pipework, both as-constructed and to be constructed in the field. The interoperability of WaterGEMS enabled the team to import aerial imagery and reference data from other internal departments and generate proposed layouts in compatible formats for on-site engineers and operators responsible for running of the system, facilitating information mobility and streamlining decision making. Having a collaborative model provides a full understanding of the dynamic nature of the network from system expansion to changing yield and quality characteristics of the bores over time. Moreover, modeling the entire dewatering network in an integrated environment accelerates information mobility and allows informed decision making. WaterGEMS' What-if Scenarios Optimize Design The water management team completes all system planning and design using the hydraulic model to run specific what-if scenarios. By modeling current and future scenarios, the team optimizes pipeline sizes, pressure ratings, and other factors to meet changing operational requirements at minimal cost. Using WaterGEMS enables the team to quickly turnaround design information to meet imposing deadlines for development of dewatering processes ahead of mining operations and ensure operations remain uninterrupted. Fully modeling the current and future scenarios enabled Roy Hill to install 80 percent of all pipelines with a low pressure rating, PN6.3 or PN8, which largely contributed to a savings

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