Comparative Evaluation of Flow Rate Distribution Methods for Uranium In-Situ Leaching via Reactive Transport Modeling
Kurmanseiit M. Shayakhmetov N. Aizhulov D. Tleuberdy A. Abdullayeva B. Tungatarova M.
October 2025Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI)
Minerals
2025#15Issue 10
In situ leaching represents an efficient and safe method for uranium mining, where a suboptimal well flow rate distribution leads to solution imbalances between wells, forming stagnant zones that increase operational costs. This study examines a real technological block from the Budenovskoye deposit, applying reactive transport modeling to optimize well flow rates and reduce operational time and reagent consumption. A reactive transport model was developed based on mass conservation and Darcy’s laws coupled with chemical kinetics describing sulfuric acid interactions with uranium minerals ((Formula presented.) and (Formula presented.)). The model simulated a technological block with 4 production and 18 injection wells arranged in hexagonal cells over 511–542 days to achieve 90% uranium recovery. Six approaches for well flow rate redistribution were compared, based on different weighting factor calculation methods: advanced traditional, linear distance, squared distance, quadrilateral area, and two streamline-based approaches utilizing the minimum and average time of flight. The squared distance method achieved the highest efficiency, reducing operational costs by 5.7% through improved flow redistribution. The streamline-based methods performed comparably and offer potential advantages for heterogeneous conditions by automatically identifying hydraulic connections. The reactive transport modeling approach successfully demonstrated that multi-criteria optimization methods can improve ISL efficiency by 3.9%–5.7% while reducing operational costs.
distance methods , in situ recovery , mining economic evaluation , reactive transport modeling , streamline-based methods , well flow rate optimization
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Department of Mechanical Engineering, Satbayev University, Almaty, 050013, Kazakhstan
Department of Software Engineering, Satbayev University, Almaty, 050013, Kazakhstan
Department of Mechanics, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, Almaty, 050040, Kazakhstan
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Department of Software Engineering
Department of Mechanics
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