Abstract
Aligned with the global objectives towards 2050 Net-Zero emission, innovative and novel clean technologies to replace conventional fossil-based technologies have become one of the top priorities in all industries. Hydrogen has been identified as a promising energy carrier and alternative source to replace conventional technologies consuming fossil fuels. Hydrogen based technologies has many advantages especially in industrial applications such as mining operations. Eventually the utilization of hydrogen in a mining operation has its own particular challenges that require in-depth analysis and understanding. Although the price of hydrogen represents a significant economical challenge, the understanding of manipulation and adaptation of hydrogen in any form or state is more important.
A transitional power system for heavy-duty mining equipment is hydrogen internal combustion engine that replaces a defined portion of diesel with hydrogen to reduce green house gas emissions by using scalable, flexible, and mature internal combustion engine designs. The safety of operation, emissions control, mine ventilation parameters in underground mining operations and hydrogen engine certification are the major aspects that are required to be investigated thoroughly. Moreover, these vehicles require a relatively large amount of hydrogen to be stored on-board. The safe utilisation of such reservoirs on-board in harsh and confined environment of an underground mine is essential to be assessed and simulated.
Blending hydrogen to the burning gas for underground mine ventilation heating purposes is also a transitional method to reduce the GHG emission from fossil fuel. To this end, a thorough investigation on the energy capacity, efficiency and behaviour of the burners is required to be conducted. An in-depth health & safety and risk assessment is required by performing scalable experiments and necessary modelling for ventilation and heating parameters, emission control and leak detection system.
Large quantity of hydrogen consumption by the identified applications requires a safe and specific infrastructure in terms of storage, refueling, and distribution especially in underground levels on the mine site. Appropriate refueling station design criteria, health & safety risk mitigation, best practices, techno-economical analysis, ventilation parameters for underground mines and hydrogen supply are to be assessed, investigated in detail and demonstrated to mining operations. Furthermore, appropriate guidelines are required to be developed to support missing relevant codes-standards-regulations.
CanmetMINING will promote a collective collaboration along with its developed roadmap to help the industry to achieve its global 2050 Net-Zero objectives. This article will summarize the introduction of the above-mentioned applications in the mining operation as a decarbonization solution.