Luna Innovations Incorporated was recently awarded a contract with PT Freeport Indonesia, an affiliate of Freeport-McMoRan, and one of the world's leading gold and copper mining companies, to provide an early-warning monitoring system for the West and East levees between the Otomona and Aikwa rivers in West Papua, Indonesia. Tailings are the residual moisture and sand produced in the separation of valuable minerals from ore extracted during mining operations. This residue is transported to a designated deposition area, controlled by levees on the east and west sides along those rivers.

The monitoring of the two levees will be done using a fiber optic-based distributed sensing system. A range of up to 50km on both levees will be monitored for early warning signs of potential issues that could lead to a failure of the levee structure. The system can instantly identify cable breaks and temperature “hot spots” along the length of the fiber.

The continuous monitoring of levees for changing conditions allows PT Freeport Indonesia the ability to run targeted inspections to determine if and what remedial action is necessary to prevent major failures. In addition to levee monitoring, Luna's distributed sensing technology has been used by PT Freeport Indonesia to monitor the slurry pipelines used in their mining operations since 2014.