Nature-like mining technology as a potentially monumental resolution of environmental contradictions during the development of solid mineral deposits

Abstract

The antagonistic contradiction between the biological essence of man and the abiological ways in which he obtains energy from the Sun for the creation of a food base and personal habitat is the determining factor shaping the image of our technocratic civilization. In order to address this contradiction in the development of the mineral and raw materials complex, it is necessary that the requirements for environmental security not be imposed on individual operations or processes but form the basis of a promising technological paradigm. In this way, the conservation of the Earth’s natural biota becomes a requirement and an inherent feature of the technologies created and applied. It seems abundantly clear that from a methodological point of view, technological responses to environmental challenges should be sought in the study of systems where these answers have already been obtained. Namely, these answers present themselves in biological systems taking form in nature-like technologies. Recent changes in public consciousness have inevitably led to the greener thinking in all spheres of human activity. The most illustrative ref lection of this phenomenon is the growing interest in nature-like technologies, which are associated with the main aspirations in the settling of a global environmental crisis generated by a long-term antagonistic confrontation between the technosphere and the bio- sphere. In considering the concept of nature-like technologies as a designation of the principal trend in the modernization of the general technological paradigm, it is necessary to distinguish two specific areas. Depending on whether or not the technologies that we use are present or absent in wildlife, we must first consider the construction of technologies by duplicating effective processes already observed in wildlife in the technosphere (nature-reproducing technologies) and, secondly, the creation of technological systems by transferring the effective functional structure of the circulation of matter and energy in biological systems to the technosphere (convergent technologies). The general theory of the creation of “similar to nature“ technologies is presented, based on the well-known principles of homeostatics - methods of maintaining the vital parameters of the interaction of natural and technical systems by controlling the contradictions between antagonists. The main directions of the structural and functional convergence of technical and biological sciences are identified when updating the technological paradigm of industrial development, based on the reproduction in the technosphere of systemic solutions that ensure the functioning of complex biological systems. Regarding the ecologization of the technological paradigm of the mineral resource complex, the methodology of creating an ecologically balanced technology as a multiobject cluster is based on the well-known principles of homeostatics, i.e., on the phased formation of a technological homeostat on the basis of the structure of a biological homeostat with the replacement of its essential elements with geotechnological target analogues. The result of this transformation is the construction of a convergent mining technology for integrated field development. Its use will ensure the development of technical systems that make it possible to limit external environmental impacts owing to the postexploitation self-restoration of natural biota phytocoenoses. The study was supported by the Russian Science Foundation, Project No. 19-17-00034.