Chalmers Conferences, LCM 2013

USING ECO-EFFICIENCY TO IMPROVE SUSTAINABILITY IN THE LARGE-SCALE MINING INDUSTRY
Pia Wiche, Carolina Scarinci, Claudia Peña

Last modified: 2014-09-11

Abstract


Eco-efficiency is used to analyze the convenience of installing a solar-based water heating system for a large-scale mining operation in Chile. The solar-based system will be used as primary source of heat, complemented with the currently in-use diesel-based system. Eco-efficiency is defined as the ratio between comparative savings from business as usual and GWP 100. Use scenarios are fixed to 25 years, with variations depending on annual energy demand and technology used. Eco-efficiency increases when the solar-based system is used for both energy scenarios. We find that incorporating the solar-based system makes the heating process more resilient, hence improving the overall performance of the whole system.

Keywords


eco-efficiency; mining; solar heating; copper; sustainability

References


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