Tailings Pond Level Monitoring System Using Differential GPS and Radar Level Sensor

A Canadian oil sands mining company had a requirement for real-time tailings pond water level monitoring.  The system is to provide survey quality measurement between their weekly surveys. They engaged Bentek Systems to provide a  complete solution.

Solar Powered Wireless RTU System

This monitoring system designed and fabricated as a complete turnkey assembly to insure rapid onsite deployment and minimize field costs. Solar Power System is used to power the system; with Cellular data communications is used to provide connectivity to site RTU  to the SatSCADA Server.

High Accuracy Requirements

To achieve the required measurement accuracy levels, a system was implemented using a combination of Differential GPS Transceiver (DGPS) and Radar Level Sensors.

Differential GPS with Post Processing

A DGPS transceiver was installed on the tailing barge to measure the Barge Reference GPS Level. Data from the DGPS was transmitted to DGPS Post Processing Software on SatSCADA Cloud Server in real time. The SatSCADA Server post-processed the DGPS data from the barge in addition to another DGPS data received from a GPS reference station to provide a corrected GPS Level of the Barge.  The corrected GPS level is sent back to the Data Logger on the barge.

Radar Level Sensor

A Radar Level Sensor connected to Data Logger is used to measure the distance for the Radar Level Sensor to the water line. Radar Level was chosen since Radar provides type highest accuracy and reliability through the range of operating conditions. This RLS distance combined with the GPS Reference Level is used to calculate Water Level and data logged. All data is sent periodically back up to the SatSCADA Server for archival, trending and display.

Web-Based Data Access

Users access the Water Level data via SatSCADA Web Client which can provide access through to laptop, desktop, tablets, and smartphones.