Mathematical Testing and Adjustment to Measure the in situ Soaking of Halite Brines Salts in the Solar Ponds Soto-Bubert Andres1, Shanavas Shajahan2, Cabrales Roberto3, Acevedo Roberto1,* 1Faculty of Engineering and Technology, San Sebastián University, Bellavista 7, Santiago8420524, Chile 2Nano and Hybrid Materials Laboratory, Department of Physics, Periyar University, Salem636 011, Tamil Nadu, India 3Instituto de Investigación Multidisciplinario en Ciencia y Tecnología, Benavente 980, Universidad de La Serena, Chile *Corresponding author E-mail: roberto.acevedo.llanos@gmail.com
Online Published on 16 December, 2023. Abstract In non-metallic mining, several complex problems must be worked out to quantify and make a separation of various fractions of solids and liquids in systems such as brine-salt type. The best issue is when the mass balance calculations are performed in the solar ponds every time one wishes to quantify the number of solids and liquids available in situ. It is of paramount importance to develop a better method to estimate each of the phases, and this will lead to a better estimate of the brines and salts inventories. In the current work, we have focused our attention on the quantification of the mass fraction of a saturated brine, which is retained by a solid (NaCl, Halite, Technical Grade), using a mathematical correlation model developed in this laboratory. The experiment is performed by choosing Halite and saturated brine by modelling the very floor of a puddle under normal conditions. We have calculated different impregnation values (so-called mass fraction) within a wide range of the salt crystal sizes from #8 up to #70 Tyler mesh-collecting data from over 100 experiments. We did a very precise and accurate fitting giving rise to a non-linear correlation. It is worth mentioning that the average error is close to 25% (both forecast and correlation), whereas the maximum and minimum deviation may be in the range of 30% and 1%. The impregnation has values in the range of 20.1–55.3% with respect to the weight of the salts if Halite sieves are smaller than #8 mesh. The function used in this calculation gives a quick and precise estimation of the presence of saturated brine in the halite salt. In order to limit the impregnation errors, adjustments were used during the calculation. Top Keywords Mining, Brine, Halite, Mathematical model, Impregnations values, Soaking techniques, Solar ponds, Mathematical simulations. Top |