Abstract:
The effective hydrodynamic field and ore-controlling volume of the flow field for
in-situ leaching of uranium are key parameters proposed in recent years to characterize the seepage and leaching features of underground water systems
in-situ leaching of uranium. Owing to the fact that the
in-situ leaching process occurs entirely underground, these parameters cannot be directly measured. In this paper, a calculation method for these parameters was established using Python programming language, which was primarily based on the definitions of the effective hydrodynamic field and ore-controlling volume of the flow field, as well as the spatial distribution relationships between these parameters. Python was used to build MODFLOW and MODPATH programs, through which the spatial distribution databases of the aforementioned key parameters were extracted and used in set operations. Finally, the key parameters were calculated by summing the grid volumes within their spatial distributions. This method was applied to calculate the leaching of ore layers under homogeneous geological conditions, and its reliability was verified. Under different mining conditions, the ore-controlling volume calculated by the proposed method for the 3 600 d is very close to the leaching range in final state calculated by traditional methods, with the ratio between the two volumes basically controlled above 90%. In
in-situ leaching production, the time point when the ore-controlling volume reaches 80% of the total ore body volume is considered as the designed mining time of the mining area. From the calculation results of the homogeneous model, it can be seen that among the four factors of well pattern, well spacing, permeability coefficient, and pumping flow rate, well spacing has the greatest impact on the designed mining time: The smaller the well spacing, the faster the mining area reaches the designed mining time. By computing the ore-controlling volume of a uranium mine in Inner Mongolia under different well patterns and spacings, it is shown that this method can quantitatively compute the changes in the ore-controlling volume of the flow field for
in-situ leaching of uranium over time when compared with traditional methods, which can only estimate the final-state volume in homogeneous geological conditions, and can better depict the characteristic quantities of different leaching stages. Additionally, this method is based on stochastic modeling and can be used for the analysis and evaluation of actual uranium mining sites with heterogeneous ore layers.