Due to their size and shape, and the type of terrain in which they generally occur, surface (e.g. open pit) mines often have to contend with a build-up or movement of water inside the mine workings or in the surrounding topography.

Water build-up and behaviour has, under the right circumstances, the potential to disrupt production and even threaten the safety of the mine. As a result, it is vitally important to monitor what is happening to water in the mine. Open bodies of water are relatively easy to monitor in terms of depth, pressure, etc.

However, this is not enough.  Pore pressure (the pressure of the water found among particles/pores of soil and rock) must also be regularly measured and monitored, as a significant change in pore pressure could indicate a developing situation that has the potential to affect the safety and productivity of the mine. That said, though, regularly retrieving data from piezometers installed for the purpose of monitoring pore pressure can be very laborious and time-consuming, if it is accomplished by connecting a datalogger to the electronic readout head of each piezometer in the mine, one by one.

Also, in some cases, the rock masses or soil deposits within which pore pressure must be monitored are located in remote or inaccessible parts of the mine, making frequent data retrieval even more of a challenge. In both of these cases, wireless pore pressure monitoring makes a lot more sense than using the datalogger approach.

The Loadsensing LS-G6 system, supplied by Mine Design Technologies (MDT) makes wireless pore pressure monitoring in surface mines simple and efficient. This system can monitor an array of piezometers (or other types of sensors used for pore pressure monitoring), wirelessly and at user-defined intervals.

Click here to find out more about the Loadsensing LS-G6 Surface Wireless Data Acquisition System.