Abstract
ENVIRONMENTAL AND ECONOMIC COMPARISON OF DIESEL AND ELECTRIC TRUCKS IN OPEN-PIT MINING OPERATIONS
Batur Tokac, Asli Sari, and Qian Zhang
The Robert M. Buchan Department of Mining, Queen’s University
The impact of climate change on the mining industry and how it can respond to it has become an essential topic of discussion over the past decade. The mining sector is responsible for a significant percentage of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions globally. Mining companies are looking for ways to reduce Scope 1 and 2 emissions significantly to convert their operations to more environmentally friendly and yet feasible businesses. Switching their diesel haulage truck fleets to an all-electric haulage fleet is promising to eliminate Scope 1 emissions, contributing to companies’ net-zero emission goals.
With the development of cutting-edge technologies in the underground mining industry, electric equipment for haulage and production operations started to use in the 1990s. Using battery electric vehicles in the industry improves productivity and efficiency by reducing operating costs and energy consumption and appreciably lowering greenhouse gas emissions. However, the application of electric haulage equipment in open-pit mining operations is still limited. Currently, equipment manufacturers in the mining industry are committed to providing transformational advancements in electric equipment for the sustainability and decarbonization of the mining industry. Approximately 200 tonnes of capacity electric haulage trucks will become commercially feasible for open-pit mining operations in the next decade. As electrification technologies and markets evolve rapidly, concerns about reliability, maintenance, required infrastructure, capacity constraints, and operational and capital costs of deploying the electric equipment in open-pit mining complicate replacing diesel trucks.
This study addresses concerns about replacing diesel trucks with electrical trucks for haulage operations in open-pit mining to assess its environmental and economic consequences. In this context, a discrete event simulation model was developed to investigate diesel consumption and electricity demand for two haulage systems annually, including their maintenance requirements and availability in harsh weather conditions. The model monitors and records each unit operation’s fuel consumption and GHG emission rates separately. The collected outputs from the developed simulation model will be used to analyze changes in the operating cost and Scope 1 and 2 emissions. The developed model includes parameters that show a high level of uncertainty, such as speed and load factor for haulage equipment. Also, an economic model that contains operational costs based on the energy requirements of haulage trucks will be used to explore cost-saving potentials that can be achieved while reducing GHG emissions.