Remote Pipeline Pumping Transportation of Cemented Tailings Backfill Slurry

For most precious metal mines, cemented tailings backfill slurry (CTBS) with different cement-sand ratio and solid concentration are transported into the gobs to keep the stability of the stope and mitigate environmental pollution by mine tailing. However, transporting several kinds of CTBS through the same pipeline will increase the risk of pipe plugging. Therefore, the joint impacts of cement-sand ratio and solid concentration on the rheological characteristics of CTBS need a more in-depth study. Based on the experiments of physical and mechanical parameters of fresh slurry, the loss of pumping pressure while transporting CTBS with different cement-sand ratio, flux and solid mass concentration were measured using pumping looping pipe experiments to investigate the joint impacts of cement-sand ratio and solid concentration on the rheological characteristics of CTBS. Meanwhile, the effect of different stopped pumping time on blockage accident was revealed and discussed by the restarting pumping experiments. Furthermore, Fluent software was applied to calculate the pressure loss and velocity distribution in the pipeline to further analysis experimental results. The overall trends of the simulation results were good agreement with the experiment results. Then, the numerical model of the pipeline in the Sanshandao gold mine was conducted to simulate the characteristics of CTBS pipeline transportation. The results show that the pumping pressure of the delivery pump can meet the transportation requirements when there is no blockage accident. This can provide a theoretical method for the parameters optimizing in the pipeline transportation system.

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