Mines Overview

Photo of Lihir Mine.

Mines

Many mines, both underground and open pit, have used Geokon instruments to monitor the stability of underground openings or pit slopes. Instrumented mines occur in USA, Canada, Mexico, Chile, Australia, New Guinea and Zaire. Of particular note is a full-scale, mine-wide monitoring system installed at J.M. Asbestos, Quebec to warn of possible collapse of the open pit slopes.

Case Histories

Photo of Morenci Mine.

Photo of dewatering well monitoring.

Morenci Mine

Arizona, USA

The Morenci mine covers approximately 60,000 acres and has five pits, three of which are currently active. It is the largest copper mine in North America and one of the largest in the world.

The instrumentation program was designed to integrate data from Total Stations (TPS), dewatering well monitoring, slope monitoring using wire extensometers, MFL leaching levels, flow monitoring and two weather stations into a single database using MultiLoggerDB and MLWeb. Hardware solutions were developed and supplied to access all measurements via mine-wide communications using a high-bandwidth Mesh wireless TCP/IP network.

All measurements (approximately 1500 data elements in total) are integrated into a single database/interface. If an alarm is triggered, the interface allows the operations personnel to quickly determine the location, cause and relevant details of the alarm.

For additional information, please view the Canary Systems Project Profile

Geokon welcomes Case History contributions. If you have a project you would like to be considered for inclusion in our Case History section, please submit details along with 2 or 3 suitable images to the Geokon .