Mining & heavy equipment
Everything a mine site has to keep clean
Haul trucks packed with clay. Mud carried out of the gate on tyres, onto a public road. Dust lifting off a haul road every time something drives down it. Three different problems that need three different machines — and on an Australian site, water you have to use twice.
Mining equipment cleaning systems for Australian sites
KKE has been building vehicle wash plant since 1993 — 34 years — and the enquiries that reach us from Australia are consistent: Pilbara iron ore, Bowen Basin coal, and the Goldfields. Big fleets, long distances, and water that is either scarce or has nowhere to be discharged to, or both.
That is really three jobs, and they are usually bought separately. Washing the fleet — haul trucks, excavators, dozers, loaders and the light vehicles that go everywhere with them. Stopping material leaving site on tyres and in wheel arches, which is a wheel wash at the gate rather than a wash bay. And keeping dust out of the air over haul roads, crushers, screens and stockpiles, which is not washing at all. Pick the one that matches the problem you actually have.
Start here
Start with the problem, not the product
Six things a mine site asks us for. Each one is a different machine, and each has a page of its own.
Haul trucks, diggers and site vehicles
Four ways to wash a mining fleet — a drive-through lane, hand-worked water cannons, a remote joystick, or traversing trolleys that run the length of the machine.
A fast lane for a haulage fleet
The drive-through: the truck crawls through a roofless lane, nozzle banks fire from both walls and from a floor channel, and it is out in 2–3 minutes.
Mud leaving site on tyres
A bolt-together deck with ramps and its own tank. No excavation, so it moves when the working face moves.
A permanent wheel wash at the gate
Concrete-set tyre wash for a long-lease pit, a processing plant exit or the weighbridge road — the exit that is not going to move.
Dust off haul roads, crushers and stockpiles
MistBeam fog cannons atomise water finely enough to bring airborne dust down, rather than just wetting the ground under it.
Wash water with nowhere to go
Sedimentation tanks in series, then an oil–sludge separator or a cyclone filter, so the wash runs on the water it has already used.
The case for it
Why the fleet gets washed at the end of a shift
Most of our mining customers wash every machine off-shift rather than when it looks bad. It is a maintenance decision before it is a presentation one.
- A clean machine can be inspected. Cracks, weeps and loose fasteners are found on the wash pad, by someone looking, instead of after a failure.
- Packed clay is load. Clay set hard in track frames, rollers and sprockets adds weight and works the drivetrain every hour the machine runs.
- Mud at the gate becomes someone else's road. What leaves on the tyres lands on a public road, and that is the site's problem the moment it gets there.
- Trades work faster on a clean machine. And more safely — a fitter is not feeling for a fitting under a coat of slurry.
The part people forget
On an Australian site the water side is usually the constraint
A mine-site wash moves a lot of water, and on a remote site there is no sewer to put it in and rarely a supply to keep drawing on. That makes the water train part of the machine rather than an accessory to it — and it is usually what decides where the pad can be built and how often it can run.
- Sedimentation tanks in series drop the solids out first, coarse to fine.
- A skid-mounted oil–sludge separator or a cyclone filter takes what settling cannot.
- The cleaned water goes back to the pumps, so the wash is not drawing on the site's supply every cycle.
Mining and heavy-industry installations include
Choosing mining cleaning equipment in Australia — common questions
Do I need a wash bay or a wheel wash?
They solve different problems and plenty of sites have both. A wash bay cleans the machine — for inspection, maintenance and the fitters who have to work on it. A wheel wash sits at the exit and cleans the tyres and arches of everything leaving, so material does not end up on the public road. If your issue is mud on the road, a wash bay will not fix it, and vice versa.
We have to wash down before plant moves to another property. Is that the same machine?
Usually yes, and it is a common reason to own a pad rather than send floats out to a commercial washdown. The requirement is that the machine leaves clean — no soil or seed in tracks, wheel arches, toolboxes or the belly plate — and that it is done at a designated washdown point where the washings are contained rather than run off. A wash bay with sedimentation and a sealed pad does both jobs: the off-shift clean and the hygiene washdown before a float leaves.
How long does it take to wash one machine?
Between two minutes and two hours, depending entirely on which system you choose: 2–3 minutes through a high-volume drive-through lane, 30–40 minutes with traversing cannon trolleys, around an hour with joystick-controlled cannons, and 1–2 hours for a full manual detail wash with high-pressure cleaners at up to 200 bar. Those are cycle times for one machine, not queue times for a fleet.
Can a portable wheel wash handle a mine site, or does it have to be concrete?
Both are used in Australian mining, and the question is how long the exit stays where it is. A portable unit is a bolt-together deck with its own tank and no excavation, so it follows the working face — which suits an open-cast operation. A concrete-set wheel wash suits an exit that is not going to move: a long-lease pit gate, a processing plant, a weighbridge road.
Does a fog cannon replace the water cart on the haul road?
No — it does a different job. A water cart wets the surface so fewer particles lift off it. A fog cannon works on the particles that are already airborne, atomising water finely enough that the droplets bring the dust down with them instead of passing through the cloud. Sites that need both run both, and the cannons go where a cart cannot: crushers, screens, transfer points and stockpiles.
How much water does it use, on a site that does not have much?
Far less than the throughput suggests, because the water is recirculated rather than consumed. The wash is built with sedimentation tanks in series and then an oil–sludge separator or cyclone filter, and the cleaned water returns to the pumps; make-up water covers evaporation and what leaves on the machine. On a remote Australian site that is not an environmental nicety — it is the only way the pad runs at all.
Tell us what the site has to clean
The fleet, the material it is moving, whether the problem is the machines, the gate or the air — and where the site is, because that decides the service answer as much as the machine does. We will tell you which of these you need, and say so when the answer is only one of them.