Water and energy management in Hydrometallurgy is a fundamental challenge for the sustainable development of mining operations. Barrier Ball? presents a double solution to the problems of evaporation and energy in free water or pregnant leach solutions (PLS) ponds. This system is an evaporation and heat transfer barrier based on semi-submerged spheres placed on the surface of the water which cover approximately 90 % of the air-liquid heat and mass transfer area. Regarding to previous experimental tests this system saves 80-90 % of evaporated water compared to a free water or PLS surface. In addition, this barrier, significantly reduces thermal losses, reducing the freezing risk in high altitude water ponds and reduces energy consumption in the case of heated industrial PLS ponds. To analyze and improve product specifications several studies using the transient simulation software, TRNSYS, and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CDF) analysis through ANSYS Fluent have been performed. A general thermal and evaporation model developed in TRNSYS for free water surfaces evaluates evaporation and thermal behavior of water ponds in different climates (altitudes, wind conditions, radiation) and water temperatures. On the other hand, CDF ANSYS Fluent analysis have been developed to settle further developments: (i) CDF ANSYS Fluent wind effect analysis for large free water surfaces and wind-interaction analysis with the ground. Monitoring results confirm general behavior of this model; (ii) CDF ANSYS AIM wind - sphere interaction analysis to evaluate the stacking effect of wind on Barrier Ball arrays in large surfaces.
展开▼
