Tailings Dams

Tailings dams contain a number of rock particles, chemicals, minerals, water, and other by products left over from mining activities. This results in tailings dams often being extremely toxic for humans, wildlife, and the environment.

Improve water body monitoring

Apart of maintaining tailings dams is sampling and monitoring surrounding bodies of water to track potential contamination. These surround water bodies can sometimes be hard-to-access or dangerous. Nero can easily be flown to numerous water bodies, up to four per flight, and take samples from each one.

Increase sampling frequency

Thanks to Nero's quick and easy setup, samples can be collected much more often and from a remote location. Nero can quickly respond to sampling requests after incidents, natural disasters, or any other major events.

Sample dangerous or contaminated areas

Nero allows the collection of water from dangerous and contaminated areas that can pose a threat to personnel, removing the potential for exposure sickness or poisoning. Nero's 3-metre-long hose allows samples to be collected from above, posing no threat to the drone as well.

Other benefits of using Nero

• Zero infrastructure costs – As the system is drone based there are zero infrastructure costs required by other non-mobile systems.
• Shorter sampling time – Sampling time is sped up, with the only setup time being to turn the drone and Nero on.
• Multiple samples, one flight – Multiple samples can be taken in a single flight, making collecting samples from multiple tanks or areas easy and fast to do.

Image via Rio Tinto