A ROBUST WATER-BALANCE METHOD FOR SIZING HEAP LEACH SOLUTION

PONDS AND WATER RESERVORIES

INTRODUCTION
A wter balance is a calculation procedure, witch provides for detailed analyses of the
state of the system, using climatological and operational variables. A wter balance is an
accounting of wter, using the general hydrologic equiation (thornthwaite and mather,
1955, 1957).

Where P is precipitatio, Q is runoff, is change in storage of wter ponded on the

Surface, E is evapotranspiration ( evaporation plus transpiration), is change in soil (ore)
moisture storage, and D is Deep percolation (unrecoverable by vegetation or
evaporation).
Water-balance inputs typically include pond/reservoir characteristic, precipitation,
evapotranspiration, inflows, seepage, wter demands, and operating variables.
For heap leach pads, the loading sequence of ore is an operating variable, and must be
take into consideration in the wter balance. One of the most sensitive times for wter
handling at a heap leach pad is at startup, when large footprint reas are exposed, but
Little ore is available to hold wter. Another sensitive time is at shutdown or draindown
during a power outage, when wter cannot be recirculated from storage ponds.
Water-balance outputs are the state of the system at any time for any variable of interest.
For heap leach operations, these variables may include the volumen of wter in pregnant
and barren storage ponds, makeup wter demands, or flow rates wich must be treated
and released. Desing usually involves predicting the state of the system for extreme
events, such as meteorogical droughts or excessive precipitation. Therefore, the water
balance is a Desing tool for sizing and operating the facilities. Water balances are
generally more sensitive to operational variables than to climatological variables.

The purpose of a water balance, then, is to answer the question "How do we know that
the state of the system may not overtop the available storage? " or " How do we know
that the state of the system may not be reduce to zero at a time of heavy water demand?"
The following sections present the traditional approach to answering these questions
and a more robust approach.
Traditional water-balance approach
The traditional approach to a water balance is to use the systematic climatological
rrecord with either averages or once-through operation. The approach using averages is
to use only a 12- season model with one season representing one month. Thus, even if
the climatological time series has 30 years of data, the average approach uses the
average of the January values, the February values, and so on through December. An
alternative approach for the traditional water balance is to use the full- time series of
climatological data but only have a once-through simulation. In order to assess the

sensitivity of the initial state of the system, for example an empty reservoir, a large
number of once-through simulations must be run for each initial system state.
The fall back position of the traditional approach is to perform sensitivity analyses, by
assigning a wet or dry sequence wwithin the average time series. Often the
climatological variables are arbitrarily increased or decreased by some percentage in an
attempt to simulate a wetter or dryer than average year. Another fall back of the
traditional approach is to use a random time series of equally likely climatological
variables. These variables, precipitation for example, are generated stochastically, but
used determiniscally in the water balance.

There are two obvius drawbacks of the traditional water-balance approach.

These drawbacks are (1) the approach does not analyze all possible combinations of
climatological and operational variables, and (2) it uses an arbitrary sensitivity analysis.
Some arbitrary sensitivity analyses uses in the traditional water-balance approach
include synthetic extreme wet years, synthetic extreme dry years, wet years followed by
wet years, and dry years followed by dry years.
None of these traditional water-balance analyses can give a full assessment of running a
water balance for all possible combinations of climatological and operational variables.
Therefore, a more robust approach is needed to fully assess the impacts of a water
balance on the system being analyzed.
Robust water-balance approach
The robust water-balance approach uses the systematic climatological record or a
synthetically generated long-term time series. The difference between the traditional
approach and the robust approach, is that in the robust approach the operation begins in
each year of the systematic climatological record, and runs for the full life of the
project.
For example, if a heap leach pad has an expected life of 12 years, and there is a 20 years
climatological record, the first 12 years of the pad life are first run, using the first 12
years of the systematic record, the 12 years are run again starting in year 2 through year
13, and so on until year 20 is reached. Obviously, at year 10 there are not 12 years of
climatological data remaining. In this case,year of climatological data. If the waterbalance run begins in year 15, for example, the first six years of data are transposed to
the end of the record to always provide a full 12 years of climatological data. In this
way,all possible combinations of climatological record are experienced by the project
operation.
Obviously, in a mining or water resources project, it is not possible to determine a priori
if the project will come on line a wet, dry, or average climatological year. Figure 1
shows a 33 years time series of monthly precipitation in Peru showing wet and dry
periods based on six-year moving average analysis. By analyzing the system using a
robust water-balance method, the probability of having a successful project or finding
areas of concern during system operation can be identified. The next section gives an
example desing for the volume of makeup water and makeup pond volume for a heap

leach pad. The robust water-balance model also can be used to design the lixiviant pond
volume, or the volume of water treatment required, as well as many other operational
variables.

Figure 1: Total annual and six-year moving average precipitation showing wet and dry
periods.
Desing example
The following example project demonstrates the use of the robust water-balance
approach.
This project is a 2,8 million tonnes per year (tpy) gold heap leach project in northern
Peru. Previous designs had been done, and this project was an expansion to an existing
project. The existing process ponds had been sized and constructed to store 182,500
cubic meters (m3) of fluid, and these ponds, were to remain with the owner's desire to
not construct either new ponds or expand the size of the existing ponds due to land
space constraints.

Desing procedure
After developing a six-year plan for expansion of the heap leach pad, a water balance
was done using the 33-year precipitation record in relation to the six-year project life.
The mine life was estimated by the owner to be approximately six years based on the
proven ore reserves. The problem was to calculate the quantity of makeup water
required to expand the heap leach pad to 2.8 million tpy.

Figure2 : Monthly precipitation time series for a 33 year period of record.

Because it is unknown a priori which ssix-years of the 33 year precipitation record
would produce the largest quantity of makeup water, a systematic approach was used to
assess this value. The first step was to perform a monthly water-balance, using the first
six year of the precipitation record. The monthly values of required pond storage and
makeup water were calculated from the water-balance equation (1). After the first six
years of the precipitation record were used, a second water-balance run ( second run on
figure 3) using years 2 through 7 of the precipitation was completed. Subsequent sixyear water balances were run, by stepping through the 33-year precipitation record by
beginning each new water-balance run in each succeeding year as shown on figure 3.
For the last five water-balance runs, climatological data from the beginning of the 33year time series were transposed to the end of the existing time series so each run used a

full six-year of data.

Figure3: Water-balance runs for six-year mine life and 33 years of climatological
record.
Interpretation of results

By beginning the six-year project water-balance in beach of the 33 years of

climatological data, all possible combinations of operational (ore loading) and
climatological possibilities were modeled. Using 33 years of the monthly data and six
years per run meant that 198 values of required pond volume and makeup water volume
were generated for each of the months of the calendar. This total number of values was
2,376 for the 33 water-balance cases. Give so many values, 198 per month, or 2,376
total values, raises the question of how to interpret the meaning of these values.
Because engineers often design facilities for the largest of smallest values
generated from a time series analysis, the robust method uses univariate stadistic to
summarize the 2,376 values into usable desing values. Univariate stadistic are defined
by the mean (average), variance (or standard deviation ), maximum, and minimum
values for a given set of events.
Figure 4 shows the required pond volume for six years of heap leach pad operation
based on using all 33 years of monthly climatological record. Figure 4 shows the
average, maximum, and minimum monthly values for the six-year project operation
period. Figure 4 indicates that the maximum storage doesn't exceed the existing pond
capacity of the 182,500 m3 of fluid. Also, the water-balance model predicts that the
minimum pond volume required is approximately 37,000 m3 at the beginning of the
six-year operation, and increased to over 100,000 m3 near the end of the operation
period (figure 4).
Therefore, the watee balance analysis helps set operational criteria for the operating
pond (s) in order to minimize the makeup water requirements.
Figure 5 shows the monthly average, maximum, and minimum makeup water rate for
the six-year project operation period. Makeup water requirements are largest in the
first few months of the expansion project (over 25 m3/h) because the ore must be
initially wetted to bring its moisture content up to the leaching moisture content. The

larger maximum makeup water requirements occur during the end of the peruvian dry
season in the months of September and October.

Figure 4. Average, minimun, and maximun required pond storage volumen.

Figure 5. Average, minimum, and maximum makeup water rate.

Figure 6 shows the cumulative monthly makeup water volume over the life of the
project. This makeup water must come from either an outside source, such as a well
field or from a storage pond separate from the operational pond(s).
Analysis of Figure 6 shows that the maximum cumulative makeup of 80,000m3 of
water occurs during the first six months of operation, when operational pond volumes
are generally low (Figure 4 ). This demonstrates that there is a combination of the 33year climatological record and operating conditions which would increase the
cumulative monthly makeup water volume by approximately four or five times the
average cumulative makeup water volume shown on Figure 6

Figure 6. Average, minimum, and maximum cumulative makeup water volume.

Therefore, designing for average conditions could lead to undersizing of both operating
ponds and other facilities. Designing for average values also can lead to inefficient
operation and shortage of makeup water. The robust water-balance method can reduce
the uncertainty of poor design and improve the understanding of the interaction between
operational and climatological variables.
Conclusions
Using a robust water-balance method to size storage ponds and reservoirs as well as to
calculate operational water demands is important to assess the interactions between
operational and climatological variables for the project. Typically, operational variables
play a much larger role than climatological variables in design of the water management
facilities.
In summary, the following conclusions are made related to use of the robust waterbalance approach.
1. Let the water-balance calculations begin in every year of the climatological record
over the life of the project.
2. Include operational variables in addition to climatological variables.
3. Use univariate stadistic to summarize the results and select design values.