Management of water balance and quality in mining areas

WaterSmart project aims to improve the awareness of actual quantities of water, and water balances in mine areas to give possibility to forecast water masses in future. The goal is to promote the anticipation and management of the amounts of water. The project focuses on developing the management systems of waters in mining areas to develop especially the risk management.

One of the aims is to exploit on-line water quantity and water quality measurements so that these measurements shall serve better the objective to manage water balance. The good practices will be identified, and selected ones tested at case study mine in order to understand their suitability, benefits as well as potential factors preventing or limiting their use, and to create prerequisites for introduction of best solutions. The second objective is to develop mathematical models used to calculate water balance, as well as to test and develop the suitability of the models in the water balance calculations. The third aim is to sort out how the monitoring and modeling tools can be integrated into the management system and process control.

The project combines on-line measurements and mathematical models with predictive process control solutions, where the objective is to manage the water balance and prevent flood situations, and on the other hand to ensure water adequacy, and thus to enable the controlled mine water treatment. The project will develop a constantly updated management system for water balance including both natural waters and process waters. The project will be implemented by SYKE, GTK and VTT in collaboration with international partners, domestic companies and other stakeholders.