Mineração Morro do Ipê employs HÖRMANN Warnsysteme sirens for tailings dam safety measures
Mineração Morro do Ipê (MMI) has chosen sirens from HÖRMANN Warnsysteme as a precautionary measure to warn the population in the danger zone of its tailings dam.
The 19 sirens are connected to sensors and are automatically triggered in the event of a dam breach, HÖRMANN says.
The high operational reliability of the German manufacturer’s sirens was a decisive factor in the decision to choose HÖRMANN, the company says. The project was completed in less than six months, from concept development to installation.
The use of sirens to warn the population became mandatory by law after two tragedies involving tailings dam failures in Brazil. Against this backdrop, all Brazilian mining projects with tailings dams must conduct a geotechnical dam failure study to predict the potential flood risk in the event of a dam failure. A geotechnical reassessment revealed that the flood zone at the dam owned by MMI had increased significantly. This necessitated the installation of 12 additional sirens.
MMI decided to replace the seven existing sirens from another manufacturer with new sirens from HÖRMANN Warning Systems. All 19 ECN-D sirens were installed by HÖRMANN’s partner EKM do Brasil in Brazil.
The ECN-D sirens can communicate with and be triggered by the control centre via both digital radio (DMR) and Wi-Fi. This redundant communication path ensures reliable triggering even if one communication medium fails, the company explains. Each siren is also monitored by video. The MCE gateway, the communication centre of a siren warning system consisting of several sirens, is equipped with two relays and, in the event of a dam breach, automatically triggers the Brumadinho area with nine sirens and the Igarapé area with 10 sirens, either individually or together. For this purpose, the siren control center was connected to MMI’s geotechnical monitoring systems at the dam.
The specific requirements for the warning system were:
- Reliable warning of the population in the event of an impending dam breach;
- The first 10 kilometers of the flood zone must be completely covered by electronic sirens with a sound level of at least 70 dB/30 m;
- Connection of the sirens to the geotechnical monitoring system at the dam;
- Operation of the sirens at locations without a power grid;
- Reliability and low maintenance requirements; and
- Two independent communication channels for triggering.
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