-The Canadian climate features long, cold winters and short, mild summers that provides the opportunity for Vale's Creighton Mine in Sudbury, ON, Canada to manage mine cooling requirements over a 50 year period. The intake air for Creighton Mine's ventilation system is conditioned by continuously pulling ambient air through the Natural Heat Exchange Area (NHEA). The NHEA is a large-scale volume created by previous open-pit and block cave mining at Creighton that contains significant broken rock tonnage with the ability to store ambient coolth and heat on a seasonal basis. The study reported in this paper is part of an on-going collaborative research project conducted by Vale and MIRARCO. The project is investigating options to extend the efficiency of the NHEA system and provide cooler air to deeper levels of Creighton Mine. A threedimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model is being developed and calibrated for dynamic modeling and simulation of the NHEA's thermal physics. The calibrated model will be used to support the assessment of both operation and system design variations to improve the NHEA's performance.

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