Abstract
AbstractWe develop a mining technology statistical model showing that even environmentally sustainable mining can be still very profitable. We put constraints on mining activities for elevated levels of particulate matters (eg, PM2.5 and PM10) in the air. We show that upper quantiles (eg, 95%) of productivity slightly decrease with respect to maximal number of failures, and this high‐productivity feature is robust with respect to variation of underlying statistical parameters. We illustrate the model on two currently active mining sites, the Chuquicamata copper mine in Chile and the opencast coal mine Libouš in the Czech Republic. Two generic working scenarios have been obtained. We show that, under very realistic conditions for both countries, the Czech Republic and Chilean mining companies can regulate mining activities for high thresholds of air pollutants without a substantial loss of productivity. Sensitivity analysis with respect to parameters is provided.
Highlights
This paper aims to contribute to the recent studies on environmental monitoring of mining sites and to complement studies such as the work of Godoy et al1 or Zhang and Jardine.2 In particular, we will analyze the productivity of two wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/asmbAppl Stochastic Models Bus Ind. 2018;34:278–292
Emphasize that one of the key problems considered in this paper is to identify the maximum number of failures r such that the availability A of the system remains high, which usually means higher than a preassigned threshold value K∗, which has been derived from different criteria, for example, as an expected value or a prescribed quantile of the availability
We introduced a novel method for testing the availability/productivity of mine complexes given the air pollution constraints
Summary
This paper aims to contribute to the recent studies on environmental monitoring of mining sites and to complement studies such as the work of Godoy et al or Zhang and Jardine. In particular, we will analyze the productivity of two wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/asmb. The last report on pollution in Chile, recently published by the Ministry of the Environment (dated on July 2017) declares that Calama continues being a saturated zone of contamination For this reason, the authorities gave themselves a term of one year to seek for a solution and receive proposals from the community to reduce this problem. For the Czech republic case, electricity production in this country is mostly based on lignite (47.8%), often referred to as brown coal, which is a soft brown combustible sedimentary rock formed from naturally compressed peat. It is considered the lowest rank of coal because of its relatively low heat content.
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