Groundwater dewatering optimization in the Shengli no. 1 open-pit coalmine, Inner Mongolia, China

Impacted by groundwater, faults, lithology, and other factors, the slope of the Shengli no. 1 open-pit coalmine has been in a state of instability. Among these factors, groundwater in the quaternary aquifer is considered primary. Thus, an optimum design for dewatering well pumping rates is presented in this paper. A two-dimensional groundwater simulation model is built to characterize the groundwater flow of the study area. A steady-state model was applied to the observed data (head and discharge) to verify and calibrate the groundwater model. The pilot point method, with a regularization option provided by parameter estimation, was used to identify the hydraulic conductivity field. Afterward, a groundwater optimization model is integrated with the calibrated simulation model to realize groundwater dewatering optimization in the studied open-pit coalmine, and an optimization method called modified Pareto dominance-based real-coded genetic algorithm is adopted. Taking into account the safety of the mine, slope and dewatering wells, seepage discharge is added to objective function and the maximum aquifer saturated thickness is set as the constraint condition in the optimization model. The results indicate that the dewatering optimization procedure developed in this paper can serve as a useful template and framework for solving mining related water problems.