Applications


Water Infrastructure

OPSIM can be used for:

  • The sizing of water infrastructure for the provisioning of reliable water supplies.
  • Management of the usage of water on mine sites to maximum function for given available water supplies.
  • Forecasting and assessment of risk associated with seasonal water supply and demand.
  • Cost-benefit analysis on the design of water infrastructure.
  • Assessment of water quality evolution for a site with solute limited discharge rates.
  • What-if contingencies and scenario planning for safe site management.

OPSIM can also be applied in agricultural and recreational settings to help to optimise these systems.

It can be used to:

  • Find the water requirements to maintain adequate moisture levels in cropped fields or for dry land grazing.
  • Investigate the benefits of alternative water resources, such as ground water, rain water, and recycled water, in one system.
  • Find the water requirements for recreational zone water infrastructure, such as irrigation systems for golf course, school ovals etc.
  • Explore the design parameters and operation of recreational lakes.

Water Processing

OPSIM can be used to:

  • Demonstrate site compliance with relevant environmental requirements.
  • Model the effects of complex water treatment processes such as high density sludge removal and reverse osmosis systems.
  • Find the size of land required for land application disposal for water with low contaminant concentration.
  • Model the accumulation of solids in a tailings storage dam to predict the storage's useful lifespan, and plan in advance any required storage expansions.
  • Conduct option analysis for multiple water processing scenarios to find the best solution through cost benefit analysis.
  • Forecast water processing efficiency by modelling the concentration of rate limiting contaminants.

OPSIM is interested in supporting research and development efforts and new or novel water treatment systems can be added to OPSIM to tailor a model to specific projects requirements.

Environmental Management

OPSIM can be used to:

  • Demonstrate compliance to environmental regulators for the predicted performance of a sit
  • Size contaminated water storage to ensure controlled releases can be made to satisfy environmental compliance and triggers.
  • Provide justification for the adequate provisioning of wet season storage allowances.
  • Find land size requirements for no runoff land application disposal of water with low contaminants concentration.
  • Forecast the concentration of contaminants throughout a system in response to historical and predicted scenarios.
  • Identify the likelihood and timing of future release opportunities utilising forecast information from the Bureau of Meteorology.
  • Plan mine site end-of-life management, closure plan feasibility, and find the specifications for water treatment infrastructure to meet closure requirements.
  • Simulate the two way interaction between water storage facilities and the ground water system.

OPSIM also implements Water Accounting Framework (WAF) with the WAF Extension. Capabilities include the operational efficiency and performance reporting of a modelled water management system. This is undertaken through the assignment of water quality based categories to the various inflow streams to the tasks. Assessment of operational efficiencies is made by tracking water category flow volumes through the course of simulation. Reporting includes comprehensive account of all water inventories entering, leaving and retained within each task of the water management system under assessment.

  • OPSIM's implementation of the WAF is in alignment with the framework for the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI, Amsterdam 2010) as applied by the Mineral Council of Australia (MCA, 2014).

OPSIM can play a critical role in the environmental planning and management of water resources in a project. Watch this space for further case studies to see how you could use this product to find innovative solutions to water system requirements.

Real-time System Management

OPSIM can be used to:

  • Easily integrate with existing management (DCS) databases to give forecast information to control room operators.
  • Provide inferred or simulated system status where systems parameters are not being measured directly in real time, and make parameter estimations based on forecast information.
  • Provide data that can be used to update console displays that are integrated into existing systems.
  • Provide forecasts of water resource performance based on up to date Bureau of Meteorology information.
  • Give probabilistic modelling of critical events, such as over topping, and allow early response based on forecast information.
  • Aid in opportunity identification such as environmental release events, which can mean decreased water storage requirements.
  • Add additional levels of safety as OPSIM will perform virtual metering in the event of meter failures.
  • Integrate with online or cloud based systems so that owners and operators can quickly and easily access current performance information as well as the forecasted performance.

OPSIM can play a critical role in real-time water system management and improve the quality and availability of data to improve decision making. Watch this space for further case studies, to see how you could use this product to find innovative solutions to water system requirements.