MIRARCO, CEMI present energy solutions.

AuthorTollinsky, Norm
PositionSudbury

Representatives of two Sudbury research organizations --MIRARCO Mining Innovation and the Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation (CEMI)--brought delegates at the Energy and Mines conference in Toronto up to speed on the projects they're working on to reduce energy consumption and introduce environmentally-friendly technologies.

Speaking on the "Journey to the 40 Per Cent Mine," Dean Millar, director of energy, renewables and carbon management at MIRARCO, highlighted two case studies from the Sudbury Basin for which current energy use was analyzed and a basket of initiatives proposed to more than halve consumption by 2040.

The mine in the first case study presented was found to consume 72 per cent of its energy use on ventilation, "so that was an obvious place to target to bring consumption down," said Millar.

The MIRARCO team found that a switch to low-friction, well-insulated ventilation ducting and variable speed auxiliary fans would bring energy consumption down to 87.5 per cent of the current level.

A further reduction to 70 per cent was deemed possible by pumping warm water from the depths of the mine to heat subzero mine ventilation air in winter. The so-called ice stope technology has been in use at Vale's Frood-Stobie complex for decades and totally eliminates the use of natural gas for heating ventilation air. In addition to warming the ventilation air, the process creates snow and ice, which collects in a void and is used in summer to cool the air. Adopting ice stope technology would bring energy consumption down to 70 per cent of the current level.

Switching to battery-electric power for the mine's fleet of loaders removes a substantial amount of diesel from underground and reduces ventilation requirements enough to bring energy consumption down to 40 per cent target.

Glencore's Nickel Rim South Mine in Sudbury started production in 2010 with a ventilation-on-demand system that accounts for only 33 per cent of the operation's energy usage. Reducing energy consumption at the mine to 40 per cent of current usage is, therefore, more of a challenge, but still possible, said Millar.

The first technology proposed in an air recirculation system that would scrub and possibly cool air instead of exhausting all of it to surface. "It requires an upgrade in legislation to make it a reality, but it's technically very feasible, especially if you remove diesel engines from the sub-surface," said Millar.

Hydraulic air compression is a...

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