Solar industrial process heating systems in operation – Current SHIP plants and future prospects in Australia

Solar thermal technology to supply process heat in different industrial sectors has become very promising in recent years. Industries can reduce their consumption of fossil fuels by replacing them with solar process heat with non-conventional system integration and using clean energy. In this paper, a systematic review of 10 countries is presented which demonstrated extensive use of solar industrial process heating systems in their manufacturing sectors. This country-wise analysis is then used to compare with current Australian scenario and identify future prospects of integrating solar process heating in Australian industrial sectors. The choice of countries is based on a database where promising industrial sectors and solar process heating applications are currently using incident solar energy. These are analyzed for their potential of integration to developing solar heat in industrial processes (SHIP) and a number of potential industrial sectors that have the highest potential like Motor vehicles, Textiles, Printing, Wood, Paper, Fabricated metal, Rubber and plastics, chemicals, Food, beverages, electrical equipment, machinery, and equipment are being identified. An overview of available studies is discussed in this paper focused on specific countries and the industrial heat demand of existing operational plants. Future trends due to solar energy potential are also outlined

A review on impact of mining and mineral processing industries through life cycle assessment

This paper analysed and summarised the significant research outputs published on the environmental impact assessment of mining and mineral processing industries through life cycle assessment. The paper presents valuable insights in identifying the gaps, where should the focus be in the mining and mineral processing industries for a sustainable future. Mining and mineral processing industries have been the key focus of research in many countries due to its increasing sustainability concerns that affect global warming and climate change. Use of heavy equipment that consumes electrical energy, mechanical energy, and an enormous amount of process heat is a key contributor to the overall impacts in the industry. Due to the use of heavy equipment and associated energy consumption, these industrial sectors contribute notably to global warming, human health, ecosystems, and resources. Among the various environmental impact assessment tools which are widely used to identify sustainability indicators, life cycle assessment (LCA) is a well-justified approach among the practitioners and researchers. Though state of the art technological tools and resources are being used now a days, there is still a research gap in identifying the key mining processes which need to be the focus of attention. Renewable energy integration in the mineral processing sector and process heating from green energy sources is becoming the emergent field of research. The review results reveal, the assessment indicators in human health and ecosystems are key factors that are mostly missing in the previous studies which are crucial for people or community living nearby mining area. This review paper identifies the research gaps to the existing literature that can form the base for future research direction in the field of LCA and sustainable energy integration in mining and mineral processing industries

Solar Process Heat in Industrial Systems- A Global Review

In developing countries, industries and manufacturing sectors consume a major portion of the total consumption of energy, where most of the energy is used for low, medium or high temperature heat generation to be used for process applications known as process heat. The necessity to commercialize clean, cheap and efficient renewable sources of energy in industrial applications emerges from increasing concerns about greenhouse gas emissions and global warming and decreasing fossil fuel use in commercial sectors. As an abundant source of energy, solar energy technologies have proven potential. Recent research shows currently only a few industries are employing solar energy in industrial processes to generate process heat while replacing fossil fuels. Solar thermal power generation is already very well-known and getting popular in recent years while other potential applications of the concentrated heat from solar radiation are little explored. This review paper presents a detailed overview of the current potential and future aspects of involving solar industrial process heating systems in industrial applications. In order to keep pace with this emerging and fast growing sector for renewable energy applications, it is necessary to get in depth knowledge about the overall potential of industrial processes in individual industrial sector where solar process heat is currently in use and identifying industrial processes are most compatible for solar system integration depending on temperature level and the type of solar collector in use. Furthermore, the promising sectors needs to be identified for the use of solar heat using industrial processes for the integration of solar heat, so that countries with immense solar energy potential can use those technologies in future to reduce fossil fuel consumption and develop sustainable industrial systems. This paper presents a comprehensive review of the potential industrial processes that can adopt solar process heating systems and thus driving towards sustainable production in industries

Life cycle assessment and techno-economic analysis of mining industries: prospect of solar industrial process heating system integration

Thesis by publication.Bibliography: pages 332-346.1. Introduction -- 2.Solar industrial process heating systems in operation - current SHIP plants and future prospects in Australia -- 3. Solar process heat in industrial systems - a global review -- 4. A review on the imapact of mining and mineral processing industries through life cycle assessment -- 5. Towards sustainable TiO2 production : an investigation of environmental impacts of ilmenite and rutile processing routes in Australia -- 6. Comparative life-cycle assessment of uranium extraction processes -- 7. Life cycle analysis of copper-gold-lead-silver-zinc beneficiation process -- 8. Impact analysis of gold-silver refining processes through life-cycle assessment -- 9. A global life cycle assessment of manganese mining processes based on EcoInvent database -- 10. Impacts of aluminium production : a cradle to gate investigation using life-cycle assessment -- 11. Life-cycle assessment of solar integrated mining processes : a sustainable future -- 12. Techno-economic analysis of solar thermal energy integration into mining processes : a case study in Australia -- 13. Conclusion and future recommendation.In Australia, the leading industrial sector mining and mineral processes consume a significant portion of fossil-fuel driven energy for generating industrial process heat, which can be replaced by alternating energy generation resources like solar energy. Australia has one of the highest levels of solar radiation on earth which is adequate to generate process heat to supply industrial demand. The necessity of solar process heat integration into the mining industries has always been overlooked due to the knowledge gap about the environmental impacts of fossil-fuel generated mining processes and also due to the lack of comprehensive research about operating industries that are already utilising solar resources for process heat generation. Mining processes which require fossil fuel replacement needs feasibility analysis to understand the adaptability level of solar process heat integration in these mining processes. This PhD thesis by publications aimed to identify environmental impacts that were generated from the key mining industries and fill the knowledge gaps in regards to solar thermal process heat integration in mining industries through the life cycle assessment. The leading mining industries were investigated in this thesis by considering their energy-intensive processes and the feasibility analysis using appropriate solar thermal system design. The environmental impact was assessed through modelling of life cycle assessment system, based on the comprehensive inventory dataset which was developed in the purpose of this thesis, analysed using LCA tool and solar thermal analysis software. In this study, ten mining processes were investigated, which are aluminium , ilmenite, rutile, gold, silver, lead, zinc, copper, manganese, and uranium. The processes considered for the impact analysis are mining, extraction, beneficiation, and refining processes. Life cycle environmental impact analysis of those selected mining industries was conducted to quantify which mining processes are harmful to environmental sustainability. These results were the key indicator to rectify the mining processes from where to start renewable energy integration. According to the results found from the analysis, the energy-intensive mining industries which were harmful to sustainability are aluminium (refining), gold (beneficiation and refining), rutile (extraction), and uranium (extraction). Bauxite to alumina production processes was extensively analysed, which showed that alumina smelting and refining consumes a huge amount of fossil fuel-generated energy and emits harmful particles towards the environment, while the climate change impact is 10.91 kg CO2 eq. Similarly, in the ilmenite-rutile mining process, as the mining ore goes deep down to the earth, the more energy and equipment were required for extraction. Three different types of uranium extraction process were evaluated, which shows that in-situ leaching mining impacts over open-pit mining and underground mining (climate change is 6.3 kg CO2 eq for open-pit mining, 26.67 kg CO2 eq for underground mining, and 75.895 kg CO2 eq for in-situ leaching of 1 kg of uranium). Gold-silver-lead-zinc-copper beneficiation and refining processes were assessed separately, which showed gold beneficiation and refining were the most energy-intensive and harmful emissive process, due to the energy consumption during the mining and use of heavy machinery (climate change impact is 0.97 kg CO2 eq from copper, 3640.55 kg CO2 eq from gold, 0.268 kg CO2 eq from lead, 62.12 kg CO2 eq from silver, and 0.41 kg CO2 eq from zinc which is 1 kg in mass). In the next phase, the feasibility of the solar process heat integration, including techno-economic analysis, was conducted based on many solar collector designs. Different types of solar collectors were arbitrarily integrated and simulated in those chosen mining processes to identify the most suitable and least impactful solar collector type. It has been found that evacuated tube collector has better performance rather than for flat plate solar collector in terms of sustainability. At the last stage, a techno-economic analysis was conducted to study the feasibility of the chosen solar collector for two different locations in New South Wales, Australia. The location was chosen arbitrarily as there were several operating mines nearby those locations. The study compares three designs of solar industrial process heating systems: buffer tank system with or without flow heater, and external heat exchanger. The study found that the buffer tank system with continuous flow heater for process heating made of evacuated tube collector would be the most beneficial in terms of solar fraction and annual fuel savings. Using the evacuated tube collector, the solar fraction would vary from 70.2% to 81.5% while using the flat plate collector the solar fraction would vary between 34.2% to 44.2%.Mode of access: Internet.1 online resource (xxvi, 346 pages, illustrations, maps

Mechanisms of Persistent Identification of Topological Entities in CAD Systems: A Review

Parametric CAD modelling systems requires the successful CAD model creation and modification in the product design phase. It demands persistent identification of topological entities, retrieving faces, edges, and vertexes are done with those entities specific unique names called persistent IDs. Those names should contain their unique properties which would be unambiguous among topological entities. In this paper, we are going to present reviews of existing persistent identification mechanisms and discuss their merits and demerits based on topology based approach, geometry based approach, or a combination of both ones. This review paper tries to define persistent identification mechanism not simply by topology and geometry but by their unique properties like feature orientation based persistent identification, faceIDGraph based persistent identification etc. Previous papers classified the persistent identification mechanism by only the topological or geometrical properties of entities which are too simple to understand the inside merits and demerits of that method. This paper also identifies the advantages and limitations of the current persistent identification approaches while suggesting a new approach should be developed consisting of both topology and geometry based approach. This paper also suggests the future direction of persistent identification of parametric CAD models and their entities. Keywords: Feature based CAD, Persistent identification, Topology, Geometry, Topological entit

Solar process heat integration in lead mining process

The necessity to increase renewable energy consumption in the industrial, residential, and commercial use is crucial due to increasing use and decreasing reserve of fossil fuels. This paper is focused on the modelling and optimization of solar industrial process heating system using a flat plate collector and evacuated tube collector integrated into lead mining process for 7 different lead miner countries of the world: Australia, Canada, Indonesia, China, Peru, Russia, USA. Comparative analysis among seven miner countries is conducted by considering a few cases based on solar industrial process heating system design. The number of solar collectors installed is then optimized for three different designs of SHIP system in two different locations in Australia. To analyze the reduction potential of environmental burdens, life cycle assessment of lead mining process has been carried out based on the global average dataset. Environmental impact can be greatly reduced in global warming, human toxicity, and fossil fuel scarcity through the solar process heat integration. The evacuated-tube collector based solar process heating system with solar loop heat exchanger would have the highest efficiency and solar fraction over the other types of systems considered. Increasing the number of solar collector installation would result in higher solar fraction and capital cost

Life cycle assessment of cobalt extraction process

This paper presents the results of an investigation carried out on the impacts of cobalt extraction process using a life cycle assessment by considering a cradle-to-gate system. Life cycle inventory data was collected from the EcoInvent and Australian Life cycle assessment database (AusLCI) and analysis were performed using SimaPro software employing the International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD) method, and Cumulative Energy Demand method (CED) for per kg of cobalt production. Several impact categories are considered in the analysis i.e. global warming, ozone depletion, eutrophication, land use, water use, fossil fuels, minerals, human toxicity, ecotoxicity, and cumulative energy demand. The analysis results indicate that among the impact categories, eutrophication and global warming impacts are noteworthy. Medium voltage electricity used in cobalt production and the blasting operation appears to be causing most of the impact and emission into the environment. The sensitivity analysis was carried out using three different case scenarios by altering the electricity generation sources of UCTE (Synchronous Grid of Continental Europe) to investigate the proportional variation of impact analysis results. Furthermore, the impacts caused by cobalt production are compared with nickel and copper production processes to reveal their relative impacts on the environment and ecosystems