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 — this is where each one starts.
Mining equipment cleaning systems, and what each one is for
KKE has been building vehicle wash plant since 1993 — 34 years — and mining is where the equipment gets the hardest use it will ever see. Abrasive dust, packed clay, water that has to be caught and used again because there is no drain to put it in, and machines too big to take anywhere but the pad they are washed on.
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
The water side decides where the wash can go
A mine-site wash moves a lot of water, and on most sites there is no sewer to put it in. That makes the water train part of the machine rather than an accessory to it — and it is usually what sets where the pad can be built.
- 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 — 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.
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 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 watering the haul road?
No — it does a different job. A water truck 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 usually run both, and the cannons go where a truck cannot: crushers, screens, transfer points and stockpiles.
Where does the wash water go?
Into the system, not into the ground. A mining wash is built with sedimentation tanks in series and then an oil–sludge separator or cyclone filter, and the cleaned water is returned to the pumps. On most mine sites that is not an environmental nicety — there is simply no drain to discharge to, and no spare supply to draw on every cycle.
Is any of this off the shelf?
The system is designed around your fleet, your material and the space you have, but it is assembled from KKE modules — pumps, nozzle banks, cannons, control panels, sedimentation and separation skids — that we already build. That is what keeps a custom system from taking as long as a custom system usually does, and it is why spares for one are the same spares as for the next.
Tell us what the site has to clean
The fleet, the material it is moving, and whether the problem is the machines, the gate or the air. We will tell you which of these you need — and say so when the answer is only one of them.