Still Creek Engineering (structural engineer, Henrico Rollke, P.Eng) appointed NDY to design a truck shop at the Southeast Yukon mine. The purpose of the facility is to have a truck wash and repair area (in addition to a small office section) for the mining trucks.
The large underground mining trucks used in the mine are about 20-30 feet high, used for digging and transporting frozen zinc ore to the production plant. After the trucks are used, they must undergo a thorough clean in the wash bay. While the Yukon Mine’s primarily focus is on zinc mining, it also mines lead, copper, silver and gold.
NDY designed three 1,500 gallon settling tanks to collect the oil and engine waste from the truck wash system. The design enables the settling of sediment and separation of oil, which makes it possible to remove floating oil from the top of the tanks. Water reclamation in the system’s process was also part of the design. After collecting the water, our team used a coalescing filter to further separate the water and oil. The oil is drawn off from the coalescing filter and reused for heating. Water is also collected and then reused in the high-pressure truck washing system.
NDY, in collaboration with Still Creek Engineering, designed the collection pad. The mining trucks are driven into the wash bay with its sloped and grated floor, designed to collect the frozen dirt and oil from the trucks. All the collected dirt and oil is directed into 3 oil-settling tanks below the floor; engine oil also comes from the same system and is run through coalescing filters to remove the oil and other impurities. Following this, the oil gets stored, heated into 50,000 litre insulated and heated outdoor oil storage tanks. Then the oil is pumped into the truck wash mechanical room’s waste oil day tank. Finally, the collected waste oil is burnt in 2 waste oil burning boilers.
Our design enables collection of waste oil from the washing and changing of engine oil from the diesel engines of 8 large electrical power generators. All the collected oil is reused on site for in-floor radiant heating. This ensured a more efficient process, with no new oil required on site (from 200 km away) for heating. With all oil collected on site reused for heating throughout the year, cost savings from the disposal of waste oil amount to a $100,000 reduction annually in the operating cost for fuel. In addition, this greatly reduces environmental impact compared to the old process, which included the risk of leakage and spillage of transporting waste oil from the site.
