- Title
- Opportunities for mineral carbonation in Australia's mining industry
- Creator
- Azadi, Mehdi; Edraki, Mansour; Farhang, Faezeh; Ahn, Jiwhan
- Relation
- Sustainability Vol. 11, Issue 5, no. 1250
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/su11051250
- Publisher
- MDPI AG
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2019
- Description
- Carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) via mineral carbonation is an effective method for long-term storage of carbon dioxide and combating climate change. Implemented at a large-scale, it provides a viable solution to harvesting and storing the modern crisis of GHGs emissions. To date, technological and economic barriers have inhibited broad-scale utilisation of mineral carbonation at industrial scales. This paper outlines the mineral carbonation process; discusses drivers and barriers of mineral carbonation deployment in Australian mining; and, finally, proposes a unique approach to commercially viable CCUS within the Australian mining industry by integrating mine waste management with mine site rehabilitation, and leveraging relationships with local coal-fired power station. This paper discusses using alkaline mine and coal-fired power station waste (fly ash, red mud, and ultramafic mine tailings, i.e., nickel, diamond, PGE (platinum group elements), and legacy asbestos mine tailings) as the feedstock for CCUS to produce environmentally benign materials, which can be used in mine reclamation. Geographical proximity of mining operations, mining waste storage facilities and coal-fired power stations in Australia are identified; and possible synergies between them are discussed. This paper demonstrates that large-scale alkaline waste production and mine site reclamation can become integrated to mechanise CCUS. Furthermore, financial liabilities associated with such waste management and site reclamation could overcome many of the current economic setbacks of retrofitting CCUS in the mining industry. An improved approach to commercially viable climate change mitigation strategies available to the mining industry is reviewed in this paper.
- Subject
- mineral carbonation; greenhouse gas (GHG) emission; SDG 12; climate change; Australian mining; mining waste; mine reclamation; SDG 13; Sustainable Development Goals; SDG 8; SDG 9
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1456043
- Identifier
- uon:45168
- Identifier
- ISSN:2071-1050
- Rights
- This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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Collections
Goal 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
Goal 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
Goal 12: Responsible Consumption and Production
Goal 13: Climate Change
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