SENSOR DDS® Leak Location Technology - Gold Mine Storm Ponds
A Storm Pond is used for collection of rainwater by the side of highways, airports, mining sites, or other industrial locations. Often the water contains contaminants such as chemicals, heavy metals, hydrocarbons and deicing salts. This means thought is often given to the management of temporary deludge by such liquid solutions.
The management of storm water normally involves the use of waterproof geomembranes in the construction of storm ponds. Maintaining the integrity of geomembranes requires them to be tested after its installation. Geomembrane damage caused by transport to site, or the installation process needs to be detected and repaired to assure that the investment in geomembrane waterproofing is not wasted, or efficacy harmed.
SENSOR DDS® MIT Testing of a Storm Pond (Gold Mine in Asia)
Project information:
- Area tested was 720,000sqft
- Two layers of HDPE 60mil geomembrane installed
- Sensor leak detection geotextile with geogrid was installed between geomembranes
- Compacted clay as subgrade
- SENSOR DDS® MIT was used to test geomembrane integrity.
At this project there were 67 leaks in the secondary geomembrane and 45 leaks in the primary geomembrane. The survey was conducted at nigh time due to high daytime temperatures. Working at night is difficult using water based detection methods (water puddle or water lance), especially considering slips and fall on the wet geomembrane. Night working with SENSOR DDS® MIT is easy with a reliable audio-visual alarm and the light from the arc itself, meaning that leak detection and location of all holes including pinholes at night was not a problem.
The daily average productivity was 85,000sqft per operator per day. Two operators completed each layer of geomembrane in 4-5 days. The leaks located were mainly cuts caused by installation tools. Damaged extrusion welds and weak fusion welds were other common geomembrane faults on this project.
