In recent years increasing growth rate of all industrial fields generated an emerging
energy demand and consequent environmental problems worldwide. Defining
environmental profiles of products and systems using environmental tools, such as
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), is a critical issue for sustainable mining. In order to
tackle the increasing environmental challenges and air emissions induced by surface
coal mining, alternative material handling options are needed to be evaluated. This
research study aims to provide a robust LCA model in selection of the alternative
material haulage systems as a decision support system. The main objectives of this
thesis study are: i) contributing to the national archived data by gathering data about
haulage systems from an open pit coal mine, ii) constructing life cycle inventory
from the acquired environmental data, iii) performing life cycle assessment of both
material haulage systems in an open pit coal mine according to their environmental
burdens, iv) conducting uncertainty assessment, and v) suggesting improvement in
stages where emissions are critical. In order to accomplish these objectives,
comparative LCA from cradle-to-grave was carried out in SIMAPRO 7.3 to
determine life cycle environmental impacts of off-highway mining trucks and belt
conveyors in coal transportation.
Climate change and acidification were selected as major impact categories
considered to be major concerns in mining industry. The results of this study
revealed that off-highway trucks had 1.9 times greater impact on acidification
category than belt conveyors, on the other hand, belt conveyors had 1.6 times
greater impact on climate change. NOx emissions caused 96 percent of the
acidification impact. CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion led to 95 percent of
the climate change effect. The obtained results also indicated that the highest impact
on all selected impact categories were generated from the utilization stage of the
trucks operated by diesel oil and utilization of belt conveyor systems operated by
electricity.
The main novelty of this study is that it is one of the first LCA studies in the Turkish
mining industry where considerable amount of emissions occur due to material
handling. This study also advances the current knowledge about environmentally
critical processes in material handling systems and places recommendations for
both alternatives aiming better decision making. The results of the study are
expected to provide a decision support system for the mining industry.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:METU/oai:etd.lib.metu.edu.tr:http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12613630/index.pdf |
| Date | 01 September 2011 |
| Creators | Erkayaoglu, Mustafa |
| Contributors | Demirel, Nuray |
| Publisher | METU |
| Source Sets | Middle East Technical Univ. |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | M.S. Thesis |
| Format | text/pdf |
| Rights | To liberate the content for METU campus |
Page generated in 0.0017 seconds