Site Selection and Design of the Tailings Storage Facility Extension at the Gruyere Gold Mine
SRK Consulting, the Engineer of Record for the existing tailings storage
facility (TSF) at the Gruyere Gold Mine, was appointed by Gold Fields in Australia to undertake a site selection study and technology options assessment for the extension to the existing TSF.
Additional tailings storage capacity is required to accommodate the latest Life of Mine forecast tailings production.
SRK investigated and compared 10 sites and 11 tailings disposal techniques and dewatering technologies to identify the most suitable combination of TSF type and site.
The SRK team facilitated a workshop with all the relevant Stakeholders to shortlist the options and to identify and agree on the key selection criteria needed to inform the trade-off study. The selection criteria included project economics, socio-economics, technical and environmental factors and used a qualitative method to highlight the preferred options.
The workshop was followed by a design process to match each site with the best-suited TSF dewatering technology and raising method. The final two options were subsequently progressed to a pre-feasibility level design, also developed by SRK Consulting.
