Open AccessCarbon footprint comparison of three different mine tailings management using a life cycle assessment approach
Author(s) -
Joni Safaat Adiansyah
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
iop conference series. earth and environmental science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1755-1307
pISSN - 1755-1315
DOI - 10.1088/1755-1315/413/1/012021
Subject(s) - tailings , carbon footprint , life cycle assessment , renewable energy , environmental science , footprint , waste management , coal mining , carbon fibers , stack (abstract data type) , environmental engineering , coal , mining engineering , greenhouse gas , engineering , production (economics) , chemistry , geology , computer science , paleontology , oceanography , algorithm , composite number , electrical engineering , economics , macroeconomics , programming language
One of the potential risks in the mining operation is tailings management. Some environmental incidents occurred were associated with tailings. This paper investigated the carbon footprint of three different mine tailings management using life cycle assessment (LCA) and The Australian indicator set method was applied to assess the carbon footprint. Those three different mine tailings management were tailings paste (OPT 1), thickened tailings (OPT 2) and OPT 1 improvement. The extended strategies for OPT 1 were also proposed by improving flotation technology and introducing renewable energy sources (OPT 1A-G). These strategies changed fine coal segregation technology from column flotation to stack cell (OPT 1A) and substituted fossil fuels to renewable energy with the various reduction percentage of 10%, 30%, 50% (OPT 1B-G). The results of the analyses show that OPT 1 generated the highest carbon footprint compared to the base case scenario (OPT 2). Replacing column flotation with stack cell contributed to the reduction of carbon footprint by 18%. The renewable energy (the wind and solar) utilization of 10%, 30%, and 50% affected vary on the carbon footprint reduction from 24% to 44%.