Critical material management for sustainable transition

Industrial Ecolog

Bluecap: A geospatial model to assess regional economic-viability for mineral resource development

© 2020 Frontier mineral exploration is often exclusively focused on assessing geological potential without consideration for the economic viability of resource development. This strategy may overlook potentially prosperous zones for more geologically-favoured but financially-disadvantageous regions, or conversely, may introduce implicit biases against potential developments without due regard to underlying economies of scale or proximity to infrastructure. Accordingly, in this paper, we introduce a numerical model aimed at identifying economic fairways, i.e. areas permissive to mineral development from an economic perspective. The model, Bluecap, combines large-scale infrastructure and geological datasets to conduct geospatial analysis of the economic-viability of mining operations across Australia. We provide a detailed description of the inputs and assumptions that underlie the cost models employed in Bluecap, outlining the methods used to evaluate mining, processing, administrative and infrastructure expenses. We also describe the databases used by the model to evaluate available infrastructure, transportation distances and depth of cover. Finally, we present examples that demonstrate the use of the Bluecap model on regions around Mount Isa and the Murray Basin to verify its ability to evaluate commercially feasible mineral prospects. While the immediate utility of this model stands to benefit mineral explorers, its ability to map mineral economic fairways also provides an objective, evidence base to underpin government decision making with respect to position of new infrastructure and consideration of competing land use claims

Substance flow analysis of steel and long term sustainability of iron ore resources in Australia, Brazil, China and India

Substance flow analysis (SFA) provides a helpful tool for the study of the industrial metabolism of a certain substance within a regional level. This paper presents SFA of steel in four countries, namely Australia, Brazil, China and India. These countries are traditionally economically mineral dependent and are major contributors in global iron ore production. For example, in 2010 together these countries produced 81%of world iron ore. Based on the analysis it was found that Australian and Brazilian iron ore stocks will deplete rapidly while China and India are accumulating. This paper then presents a discussion on sustainability issues related to substance flows of steel stocks. The study is aimed at providing better understanding of stocks and flows and to inform the policy making for achieving the industrial metabolism and consequently leading to better management of resources and recycling of steel in the countries under study

The steel industry, abiotic resource depletion and life cycle assessment: A real or perceived issue?

Time and again, there has been a hue and a cry that the world is running out of natural resources and the most prominent among those is the famous study entitled 'The Limits to Growth' by the 'Club of Rome'. Since then the fear of scarcity of abiotic resources has been challenging human societies around the globe, particularly the research community. In this paper we will examine the case of the steel industry to argue how and why mineral resources depletion is an issue that needs to be addressed through life cycle assessment in more detail. This paper shows that a more comprehensive understanding about the current production trends of iron ore and steel, which also requires several vital metals such as copper, manganese, nickel and so on, can provide useful insights in assessing the potential future threat of shortages due to depletion of abiotic mineral resources

Prediction of soil erosion from waste dumps of opencast mines and evaluation of their impacts on the environment

The volume of mine waste rock generated, including tailings from mineral processing activities, is one of the main pollution concerns in the mining industry in general. In the State of Goa (India), the waste rock management is becoming increasingly difficult due to acute space shortage consequent to expanding mining activities. These waste rocks contain acid producing sulphides and high concentrations of heavy metals. In the Goa region, the agricultural fields, nallahs, river beds and creeks are prone to heavy siltation/sediment deposition, which results from soil erosion due to the heavy rainfall this region receives. In view of this erosion and consequent degradation of surrounding environment, this article seeks to estimate the amounts of soil erosion from mine waste rock dumps using the RUSLE model and evaluates the impacts of erosion on the local environment. Based on data interpretation and RUSLE analysis, the trends in soil loss were established under various geo-environmental conditions, such as different slope angles and lengths. This provides a sound basis to plan and implement sound environmental management practices for mine waste rock in the mines of Goa, India

Toward a dynamic evaluation of mineral criticality: Introducing the framework of criticality systems

© 2019 by Yale University A new methodology to quantify minerals’ criticalities is proposed—the criticality systems of minerals. In this methodology, four types of agents—mineral suppliers, consumers, regulators of the market, and others, such as the communities near mining operations—interact with each other through three types of indicators: constraints, such as the political stability in the mining regions, the mineral's substitutability and economic importance; agents’ interactions, such as buyer–seller bargaining; and interactive variables, such as the demand, supply, and price. When the criticality systems of two mineral groups are constructed, analyses that compare the indicators of these criticality systems can determine which group is more critical than the other. This methodology allows evaluation of criticality in a dynamic and systemic manner

Environmental life-cycle comparisons of steel production and recycling: Sustainability issues, problems and prospects

This paper reports on historical analysis of the steel industry in which crude steel production trends are quantified for the period from 1950 to 2006. On the basis of this analysis, the future production of steel for the world is estimated using regression analysis. The historical analysis shows that the world steel production increased from 187. Mt to 1299. Mt in that period. In addition, the paper also reports on historical (1950-2006) steel scrap consumption and was compared with crude steel and electric arc furnace (EAF) steel production. Since 1950, scrap consumption by steel industry worldwide has been growing at 12% per annum whereas the EAF share of steel production has been increasing at 66% per annum. Furthermore, since 1987 iron ore prices have increased at 24% per annum whereas scrap prices have grown by 13% per annum.From the analysis on environmental benefits of steel recycling, it was established that there are numerous advantages of scrap utilisation. The major environmental benefits of increased scrap usage comes from the very fact that production of one tonne of steel through the EAF route consumes only 9-12.5GJ/tcs, whereas the BOF steel consumes 28-31GJ/tcs and consequently enormous reduction in CO2 emissions. In addition, a discussion on various alloying elements in steel and their presence in residual concentrations in the scrap on steel properties is also presented. Finally, this paper presents a discussion on policy issues that could enhance the use of scrap in steel-making is also presented