Exploring the use of deep level gold mines in South Africa for underground pumped hydroelectric energy storage schemes

The Influence of Illegal Gold Mining (IGM) on Environmental, Economic, and Educational Sectors of Muara Mensao Village, Jambi

“…Mining is one of industrial sector and it was highly potential for environmental pertubation [2,3,11,12,19,23,24]. Nowadays, this situation is getting a special notice from scientific community for being their research topic.…”

“…Due to the unqualified artisanal in IGM activity, the processes of digging, extraction, and refining of gold lead pollution for environment and ecosystem. The negative impact for environmental sector are abration of land [8], contamination of heavy metal Arcenic (As) and Mercury (Hg) [9], deforestation [10], water pollution, damage of farmlands [11], appearance of big pit [12], decrease of vegetation [13], decay of stream, emergence of social problem [7], cyanide (CN) [14] etc. According Koekkoek (2013), the annual leaching and emision of heavy metal mercury (Hg) in 70 developing counturies by Artisanal Gold Mining (AGM) reaches 1608 tonnes.…”

Numerical study of the Martelange mine to be used as underground reservoir for constructing an Underground Pumped Storage Hydropower plant

“…UPSH possibilities have been investigated in different parts of the world: The Netherlands (Min, 1984), Singapore (Wong, 1996), USA (Allen et al, 1984;Severson, 2011), Germany (Beck and Schmidt, 2011;Zillman and Perau, 2015;Alvarado et al, 2016), Belgium Poulain et al, 2018), Spain (Menéndez et al, 2017), South Africa (Winde and Stoch, 2010a, b;Khan and Davidson, 2016;Winde et al, 2017), Finland and Australia (Academy of Science of South Africa, 2018). However, there are no bibliographical evidences of constructed UPSH plants.…”

“…These tasks would require draining the mine. In addition, although some previous works are focused on real cases (Beck and Schmidt, 2011;Winde et al, 2017), none of them, with the exception of Bodeux et al (2017), quantify numerically the interaction between groundwater and a UPSH plant based on real data from a deep abandoned mine. Finally, previous studies do not investigate the influence of the mine architecture on the water exchanges and their consequences.…”

Hydrochemical changes induced by underground pumped storage hydropower: influence of aquifer parameters in coal mine environments

“…The excess of electricity generated during low demand energy periods is used for pumping water from the underground to the surface reservoir, and when the demand of energy increases, water is released into the underground reservoir through turbines for generating electricity. Although there are not bibliographical evidences of UPSH constructed plants, this technology has been investigated in different parts of the world: the Netherlands (Min, 1984), Singapore (Wong, 1996), USA (Allen et al, 1984;Severson, 2011), Germany (Beck and Schmidt, 2011;Zillman and Perau, 2015;Alvarado et al, 2016), Belgium Poulain et al, 2018), Spain (Menéndez et al, 2017) and South Africa (Winde and Stoch, 2010a, b;Khan and Davidson, 2016;Winde et al, 2017), Finland and Australia (Academy of Science of South Africa, 2016).…”