Comparing the environmental sustainability of two gold production methods using integrated Emergy and Life Cycle Assessment

Cano, Natalia; Velásquez, Héctor; McIntyre, Neil

doi:10.1016/j.ecolind.2019.105600

Cited by 31 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…LCA is a highly versatile methodology, which finds application in different production sectors, it can be used for the evaluation of entire industrial systems (Zhao et al 2018;Sabeen et al 2019) or individual products (Peters et al 2017;Cano Londoño et al 2019), it can involve the study of new technologies (Lacirignola et al 2017;van der Giesen et al 2020) or the improvement of existing ones (Mohammadi and South 2017;Neri et al 2018); moreover, it can also be applied both on an industrial (Cespi et al 2016;Piccinno et al 2018) and laboratory (Ricciardi et al 2017;Tsapekos et al 2019) scale to address sustainability in various fields. Its use has naturally reached also agricultural studies, with a particular focus on biological systems, as shown by the numerous recent works carried out on the subject (Quirós et al 2015;Clark and Tilman 2017;Brockmann et al 2018;Trinh et al 2020;Avadí 2020;Jezierska-Tys et al 2020).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental sustainability assessment of organic vineyard practices from a life cycle perspective

Volanti

Martínez

Cespi

et al. 2021

Int. J. Environ. Sci. Technol.

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Due to increased awareness of the current and future issues with the environment, sustainable development has become a well-known concept and goal in the last decades. Based on this idea, organic agriculture is now fairly generalized in many farms and grape processing factories. Life cycle assessment (LCA) represents a valuable and standardized technique to evaluate how sustainable a crop can become, determining the potential impacts that the complete-life product causes on the environment and on the management/conservation of resources. Although LCA can be applied to any product, this work focusses on organic grapevine crops as the subject of study, in order to improve energy and water efficiency and minimizing issues such as the use of pesticides. This paper, collecting primary data from three Spanish grape processing factories, quantifies the reduction of the overall impact related to the avoidance of artificial irrigation, amounting to 10%, and the saving of resources (− 4.3 kg oil eq. per ha) due to the replacement of chemical fertilisers with animal manure. On the other hand, the use of manure has shown some controversy from an environmental point of view as it contributes to global warming, resulting in an increase in the total impact of the organic vineyard. As predictable, the application of conventional practices as well as the use of water for irrigation could both result in a higher overall yield, and in a contemporary growth of environmental impacts; a discussion about the quantification of this aspect is also inserted.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental sustainability assessment of organic vineyard practices from a life cycle perspective

Volanti

Martínez

Cespi

et al. 2021

Int. J. Environ. Sci. Technol.

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“…e shear failure of structural planes of coal slopes has been reported to cause severe slope instability problems [18]. Weak structural surfaces could be formed by multitudes of joints, and rock mass integrity could be impaired if they are widely distributed throughout rock slopes [25][26][27]. Given the uncertain geometric and mechanical parameters between them, such as uncertain directions, dip angles, and locations, the distribution of joints could be complex and difficult to understand [26,27].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Weak structural surfaces could be formed by multitudes of joints, and rock mass integrity could be impaired if they are widely distributed throughout rock slopes [25][26][27]. Given the uncertain geometric and mechanical parameters between them, such as uncertain directions, dip angles, and locations, the distribution of joints could be complex and difficult to understand [26,27]. erefore, under blasting dynamic disturbance, the dynamic mechanical properties of coal slopes with weak intercalated layers could be rather complicated.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…MATLAB was used to compile the Chebyshev II bandpass filter in order to filter the wave and obtain the effective waveform frequency.3.3. Dynamic Response Characteristics of the Slope.In order to study the influence of input wave frequency on slope dynamic response characteristics, the displacement and shear strain nephograms of slope under dynamic loads with different frequencies(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30) are shown in Figures 4 and 5.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Dynamic Response Characteristics and Failure Mechanism of Coal Slopes with Weak Intercalated Layers under Blasting Loads

Liu

Song

Chen

et al. 2020

Advances in Civil Engineering

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Rock slopes with weak intercalated layers could experience disturbance from various deep mining activities; however, their dynamic stability has not been thoroughly investigated. In this paper, the dynamic response characteristics and failure mechanism of the coal slopes with weak intercalated layers under blasting loads were studied by means of numerical analysis, shaking table tests, and field tests. The effects of dynamic loads with different frequencies on the dynamic response of the slope were analyzed, and the natural frequency of the slope was also determined. The results show that the dynamic amplification effect of the slope is smaller than that of the homogeneous slope, and weak layers weaken the wave propagation in the rock mass. Both experimental and field investigation results show that the slope’s natural frequency was approximately 35 Hz. The slope deformation decreased with the distance of the blasting source. Cracks appear along the weak interlayer firstly under the action of horizontal vibration; then, longitudinal cracks occur at the slope crest. With the increase of dynamic loads, cracks continue expanding, deepening, and penetrating in the main controlled weak interlayer; then, the sliding body presents tensile shear failure along the sliding surface. This study could provide insights into the understanding of the coal slope instability and failure mechanism; this could benefit the blasting operation of the coal slope in fields.

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“…Fig. 1, Tables 1e5 shows anopen-pit mining process flow diagram of the study case, which is divided into five stages, ranging from the mining stage to the smelting stage, and which comprises the inherent process of the mining activity, showing the input of matter and energy for every single process [16]. It is important to highlight that the principal yellow flows indicate the gold content within the flows, in order to differentiate them from the material without any gold content.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of the extractive gold process: open-pit mining through exergy analysis

Velásquez¹,

Loaiza²,

Hasenstab³

et al. 2020

Journal of Sustainable Mining

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The Colombian mining sector is characterized by the production of coal, nickel, emeralds, gold, and construction materials. It is considered by the National Development Plan of Colombia 2018e2022 as an economic agent that boosts development in the region and one that requires the strengthening of its policies and environmental liability. Therefore, this paper aims to show the importance of implementing methodologies based on the logic of nature (exergy) that objectively indicate the environmental impact of an extractive gold activity, such as open-pit gold mining. The extractive activity or process to be studied consists of the following stages: topsoil removal by using machinery and explosives to create craters and to access the mineral present in the subsoil; the physical transformation of the extracted material through crushing, grinding, gravimetric separation, flotation, leaching, adsorption, elution, and electrodeposition, along with smelting and casting to obtain gold and silver ingots. Thus, this paper analyzes the exergy performance of each unit process of the open-pit extractive process. The obtained results are used in a sensitivity analysis, which determines the system efficiency, by assuming the increase of gold in the extracted material in the exploitation stage, by using the same supplies and input of the current process. In other cases, the open-pit mining process is analyzed by changing its technologies in the mining process and assuming that this change reduces the inlet ore to 60%, by discarding 40% of material without gold and by reducing supply consumption by 25%. By improving the system efficiency, the exergy destroyed is reduced and the emissions to the environment diminish. Therefore, this method may be implemented as a basic guideline when it comes to decision-making processes in the planning of the extractive processes by integrating the environmental component with gold production.

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Comparing the environmental sustainability of two gold production methods using integrated Emergy and Life Cycle Assessment

Cited by 31 publications

References 35 publications

Environmental sustainability assessment of organic vineyard practices from a life cycle perspective

Environmental sustainability assessment of organic vineyard practices from a life cycle perspective

Dynamic Response Characteristics and Failure Mechanism of Coal Slopes with Weak Intercalated Layers under Blasting Loads

Evaluation of the extractive gold process: open-pit mining through exergy analysis

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