Using water balance tools for site design, operation and expansion management

ABSTRACT: As gold production continues to be highly profitable, businesses must make critical decisions how to manage their sites. The recovery and safe storage of water and process solutions is often at the forefront of their concerns. Even though many businesses rely on experience and operating plans to manage daily water supply, there are few tools and solutions available to perform realistic forecasting and simulate new operating scenarios for the near and long term. Modifying spreadsheets and hiring consultants to evaluate numerous combinations is becoming less practical. Meanwhile, a new class of software is emerging. With simple user interfaces and sophisticated, “behind-the-scenes” precipitation models, heap leach models and tailings storage facility models, users can quickly forecast conditions based on design and actual information. Even missing information like actual precipitation and pond depths are being filled “intelligently” through advanced programming. Users needed considerable programming knowledge, training and time to perform these tasks not long ago. Now, users can easily and intuitively modify input information and understand the output in minutes.