At present drilling-and-blasting, fill and wooden filtering barriers are used in hydraulic filling areas of potash mines of Uralkali PJSC. Type of the used barriers is defined taking into account mining and geological and mining and technical conditions of filling operations performance. Construction of such barriers is labour-intensive and material intensive, quality of wooden barriers depends on wood quality, coefficient of brine permeability through fill barriers is low, pulp leakage is highly probable through the contact of fill and drilling-and-blasting barriers and wall. Specified features of the applied barriers have predetermined necessity to develop a barrier structure which has a small weight, is constructed in short period, is multiuse. Flexible filtering barrier has such advantages and its bearing elements are cables and strong filtering material (geotextile). For potash mines Galurgia OJSC has developed a flexible filtering barrier consisting of filtering shell, fixing, bearing and pressure (contouring) elements, sealer, anchors, and has provided recommendations on materials for the barrier construction. Testing of the flexible filtering barrier has been performed in Solikamsk potash mine 3. As a result of the test survey it has been established that by hydraulic filling operations in potash mines flexible barriers are suitable for use as filtering barriers in simple mining and technical conditions, on which holding of salt waste pulp is provided due to accessible filtering material (sacking) and textile lines of high tensile strength and labour intensity of construction is 3–10 times less compared to the applied types of barriers. Using such a barrier there is no filling pulp leakage on «barrier-salt» contact, and its elements are suitable for multiuse. Taking into account the survey results it is planned to improve the flexible barrier structure.

Keywords

Flexible filtering barrier, hydraulic filling operations, cables, filtering material, pressure and fixing elements, labour intensity, multiuse.