Why dewatering is crucial to mining’s success

Crusader Hose has an unwavering commitment to manufacturing the most robust and reliable hose systems for dewatering in Australian industry.

Dewatering is critical to any mining operation’s success and development.

Designed to control the inflows and lowering of groundwater levels, dewatering ensures the safety and efficiency of a mine site by removing water from underground and surface areas.

While dewatering is a vital process, operators are all too familiar with the challenges of safely running long overland pipelines and up high pit walls. To address these issues, Crusader Hose’s range of layflat hose and reel systems are designed and built to withstand harsh environmental conditions.

Based in Bayswater, Victoria, Crusader Hose manufactures world-leading layflat hose and handling systems locally for a variety of industrial applications.

And each layflat hose system is built with innovation at the forefront.

“We drive continuous improvement through our culture, from a whole of business perspective, not just in engineering or production,” Crusader Hose Defence Business Manager Stuart Enright told Australian Mining.

“We conduct surveys and get customer feedback on what works well for them and what products they would like to see. If there’s a gap in the market, we investigate it.”

Crusader Hose unveiled a variety of developments across its hose reel and winder systems range in 2024, including the Argyle layflat hose handling solution.

Designed for the rapid deployment and retrieval of a layflat hose, Argyle was fabricated to help alleviate manual labour challenges associated with handling layflat hose pipelines, ensuring ease of use and installation, safety, and efficiency.

“It can be towed by any four-wheel drive and deploys 200m of hose up to eight inches,” Enright said. “We’re seeing it be really useful in dealing with flood events or as an emergency stopgap.

“We had a customer that had their major ring lane damaged while conducting repair work. They were able to quickly roll out one of our hose reel systems and deploy some hose as a stopgap.”

Crusader Hose has also revolutionised its larger Hamersley reel system, which has a strong reputation in the mining industry as a leading solution for rapid dewatering.

“We developed the latest generation of Hamersley based on customer feedback,” Enright said. “Hamersley is useful for laying down larger hose lengths of up to 12 inches in diameter.

“We’ve started to see customers choose layflat overland pipelines hoses rather than running polylines. The benefit there is the speed of deployment and redeployment.

“Sometimes overland pipelines might be positioned only for a year or two, so installation and decommissioning of a polyline taking up 10–15 per cent of the total use time is unpalatable.

“But layflat only requires a couple of days to roll it up and redeploy to another area of the mine or business.”

Other benefits of Crusader Hose’s product portfolio include abrasion resistance, flexibility and adaptability to various terrain, mobility, and guaranteed long-term performance.

“There are plenty of benefits in the speed in which you can set up a layflat hose system,” Enright said. “For example, a 4km pipeline of poly pipe might take several weeks to a month to install, whereas our hose systems can be deployed in only a few days, getting your operation up and running in a shorter amount of time.

“At the end, it’s easy to roll it up and take for use elsewhere or disposal, rather than trying to deal with truckloads of poly pipe.

“What we see with several mines conducting ground dewatering is they’ll do it in one area of the mine for a particular period of time so they can excavate the area, and while that excavation is happening, they’ll try to dewater another area.

“With our layflat hose system, you can redeploy all the bore hoses and overland pipeline hoses straight to that other area. You don’t need to cut or reweld anything. It’s much simpler and safer.

“You also get the benefit of the hose being elastomeric, so it swells to a greater size than its diameter at working pressure, allowing more fluid flow through the product. It’s better at conforming to undulations in terrain, so you don’t need to support it as it conforms to the contours naturally.”

If users need to traverse equipment or trucks across the layflat hose system, they can depressurise it so it can be driven over, removing the need for disassembling the line or building a bridge. Deploying the system from location to location is also made easier.

Crusader Hose also sells field-fittable hose couplings to provide flexibility to the user on the ground.

“If you damage the layflat hose system, you can cut that point and put two new couplings in to get the hose back to full operation without any welding,” Enright said.

Looking ahead to 2025, Crusader Hose has several projects in the works.

The company is working with a mining customer requiring several hose systems for its 450m vertical high pit wall.

Crusader Hose is developing a hose rugged enough for the customer to move around the mine and up and down the benches. It will also have enough pressure to deal with the 50 bar of head required for the pump and hose to work. The project is due for delivery in early 2025.

In the defence industry, Crusader Hose is using its decades of experience supplying the Australian Defence Force with layflat hose and reel systems for its rapid refuelling projects to design and manufacture a ship-to-shore system for the South Korean Navy.

Enright described the relationship and project as collaborative.

“We did lots of research into their use case, looked at their requirements, and we negotiated where their requirements weren’t aligned with what their use case was, so we could essentially tailor a bespoke solution to them,” he said.

“I think they were very receptive to seeing our want to provide a solution and not just a system. It would have been easy for us just to say, ‘Yep, no worries. We’ll align with the requirements you’ve given’, but that wouldn’t be in anyone’s best interest.

“We’ve spent a lot of time ensuring the system will meet the end user’s needs. When (the South Korean Navy) came out to witness testing and pre-commissioning, they were blown away by the extra attention to detail we’d gone to in order to ensure the system we provide is world-class.”

If innovation is the brain power behind Crusader Hose, quality is at its heart.

“We put a lot of effort into making sure nothing leaves here that we aren’t proud of,” Enright said.

“We’re working on creating turn-key solutions with our customers, rather than them just calling us or sending a request for a quote … We can provide our expertise to ensure they’re able to get on with their core business.”

This feature appeared in the December 2024 issue of Australian Mining.