Abstract
Open pit mining is an effective way to extract valuable minerals from the earth's crust and generate significant profits for mining companies, however it also causes significant environmental harm to vast tracts of land and the surrounding ecosystems. However, the maximization of economic benefits is still the overall objective of optimizing open pit mine design, while environmental issues have been ignored in attempts to achieve more sustainable mine development. Therefore, estimating ecological costs of mining and considering such costs in the mine design process is an important step towards reducing ecological consequences at the design stage. The aim of the study is to calculate the ecological costs of open-pit coal mining and analyze how these costs affect the ultimate pit delineate. The ecological costs associated with coal mining are calculated according to the carbon emissons from energy consumption and the scope of grassland destroyed by resource extraction. There are three key components of ecological cost that have been identified: ecological service value loss, reclamation cost, and carbon emission cost. Necessary equations are provided for estimating these costs. An iterative optimization algorithm is described for ultimate pit optimization in coal deposits with near-horizontal coal seams. A case study is presented in which the ultimate pits are optimized by both with and without considering ecological costs, and compared to prove the impact of ecological costs on the ultimate pit design.
Published Version
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