Construction of water management infrastructure

With the aim of optimizing part of the water resources in Codelco’s Andean Division, the mining company carried out the Water Security Works Construction Project to increase the flow rate to the concentrator plant from 239 l/s to 320 l/s.

To achieve this increase in flow rate, the project included a new headroom for tailings disposal at Los Leones, a facility that complies with Supreme Decree 90, providing water of a quality that allowed it to be incorporated into the process as clean water. Together with groundwater rights for 200 l/s, this contributed a total flow of 150 l/s to the concentrator plant’s production process.

Therefore, to incorporate the aforementioned available water flow into the production process, the project included, a pumping system was designed to convey this flow to the Piuquenes reservoir, from where it is ultimately pumped to the concentrator plant through modifications to the existing facilities. This required transforming the existing Pumping Station No. 3 located outside the concentrator plant, increasing its discharge capacity from 239 l/s to 320 l/s.

In short, Pares&Alvarez provided site engineering services in the areas of civil, electrical, and maintainability for the project involving the construction of the Los Leones pumping station, the 5-kilometer pressure pipeline to the existing Piuquenes pumping station, and the modification of Pumping Station No. 3.