PW06 Life-Cycle Assessment
Exhibit Hall
8:00 AM - Wednesday
(PW080) Application of cost estimating database system to estimate LCI on mining activities.
Adachi, T1, Mogi, G, Sakazume, T1, 1 The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
ABSTRACT- Issues of environmental impacts due to mineral resources development have been broadly discussed. In this situation, in which people are more conscious on environment, mine design and development decision taking environmental burdens into account will be required. The environmental burdens of production activities are usually evaluated by LCI (Life Cycle Inventory). However, CO2 emissions on mining process have not been systematically estimated because CO2 emissions form equipments and consumables depend on location of deposit, mining method and production scale. In this study, we develop a database application for estimating the CO2 emissions from mining and processing activities by rearranging Cost Estimating System Handbook (1987, 1996) issued by former USBM. This database application is developed, which calculates CO2 emission factors of a mine product, based on consumed amount of energy and materials in each mine, estimated by converting the costs according to the respective domestic prices. To verify reliability of results of this database model, some case studies of surface and underground mines are simulated by comparison with real measured LCI results on specific mine. Finally, total CO2 emission factors for copper and zinc ingot smelted in Japan are estimated using major copper and zinc concentrates suppliers for Japanese smelters estimated by this database application.
Key words: mining activities, LCI, CO2 emission factor, cost estimation