Assessment of energy conservation potential and cost in open-pit metal mines: Bottom-up approach integrated energy conservation supply curve and ultimate pit limit

Liu, Yang; Zhang, Congrui; Xu, Xiaochuan; Ge, Yongxiang; Gao, Ren

doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2022.112809

Cited by 5 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…They came to the conclusion that the change in carbon price had little impact on the open-pit mining limit and cut-off grade. Yang Liu et al (2022) [15] calculated the energy consumption of open-pit metal mines based on IPCC method and combined the traditional energy-saving supply curve analysis method with the open-pit mining boundary to evaluate the energy-saving potential and carbon emission costs caused by the application of energy-saving technologies. Sam Ulrich et al (2022) [16] studied the interaction between greenhouse gas emissions from gold mining, abatement measures, and carbon prices.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Carbon Emission Prediction Model for the Underground Mining Stage of Metal Mines

Ren,

Wang,

et al. 2023

Sustainability

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At present, the carbon emissions in China’s metal mining industry can be calculated based on the amount of energy consumed in the mining process. However, it is still difficult to predict the carbon emissions before implementation of mining engineering. There are no effective approaches that could reasonably estimate the amount of carbon emissions before mining. To this end, based on the ‘Top–down’ carbon emission accounting method recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), this study proposes a model to predict the greenhouse gases emitted in seven carbon-intensive mining stages, namely, drilling, blasting, ventilation, drainage, air compression, transportation, and backfilling. The contribution of this model is to enable a prediction of the accumulation of greenhouse gases based on the mining preliminary design of mine, rather than on the consumption of energy and materials commonly used in recent research. It also establishes the amount of carbon emissions generated by mining per unit cubic meter of ore rock as the minimum calculation unit for carbon emissions, which allows for the cost and footprint of carbon emissions in the mining process to become clearer. Then, a gold–copper mine is involved as a case study, and the greenhouse gas emissions were predicted employing its preliminary design. Among all the predicted results, the carbon emissions from air compression and ventilation are larger than others, reaching 22.00 kg CO2/m3 and 10.10 kg CO2/m3, respectively. By contrast, the carbon emissions of rock drilling, drainage, and backfilling material pumping are 5.87 kg CO2/m3, 6.80 kg CO2/m3, and 7.79 kg CO2/m3, respectively. To validate the proposed model, the calculation results are compared with the actual energy consumption data of the mine. The estimated overall relative error is only 5.08%. The preliminary predictions of carbon emissions and carbon emission costs in mining before mineral investment were realized, thus helping mining companies to reduce their investment risk.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%