South East Excavations - Salt Project EPCM

Previous civil works as part of the Salt Resort Development in New Soiuth Wales had left a large hole in the ground. Around 800,000 cubic metres which equates to an area equivalent to 13 soccer fields and 8metres deep!

South East Excavations Pty Ltd were given the job of filling the hole. Instead of using conventional civil earth moving equipment such as trucks and scrapers they instead opted for a high tech method of moving sand. The sand was mined developed into a slurry and and transported to the hole via a 7klm pipeline.

R.J.Robbins and Associates designed and supplied the process plant and pumping system while ICandE designed, supplied and commissioned three Motor Control Centres, PLCs, Telemetry and the SCADA system.

The slurry pumping operation incorporated two pump houses. Each pumphouse housed three Caterpillar C9 300BHP diesel engines. At the mine a process plant was needed to crush the mined material and develop it into a slurry with control over density. A collection of process flow, density and pressure instruments as well as soft starters and variable speed drives made up the remaining plant items.

The control system incorporated Allen Bradley Flex Logix CPUs, Elpro Radio Telemetry and Industrial Ethernet. The Citect SCADA system was employed to provide operational information to the controller.

The entire operation is started and stopped in a sequence with the push of a mouse button.

The pumping operation functions 10 hours per day Monday to Friday and 5 hours on Saturdays. The hole will be filled after 14 months of continuos operation transferring approximately 450TPH of sand.