Minimum Operational Emissions in Earthmoving

Abstract

The paper explores minimum emission configurations in earthmoving and like operations, including quarrying and open-cut mining. Emissions data, based on field observations and available in the public literature, are used to derive operation configurations that lead to minimum emissions. Such configurations are compared with conventional minimum cost solutions in order to give guidance as to the best way to configure and manage earthmoving operations. Variables considered in the analyses performed include truck fleet size, truck capacity and loading, loader capacity and haul route parameters. It can be shown for certain assumptions and configurations that the minimum emissions per production solution coincides with the minimum cost per production solution. In such circumstances, managing earthmoving, quarrying and open-cut mining operations in conventional costefficient ways leads to least emissions; it also follows that not managing such operations in a cost-efficient way will lead to unnecessary emissions. The paper's derivations are original and will be of interest to those designing and managing earthmoving, quarrying and open-cut mining operations, particularly with reference to sustainability. INTRODUCTIONSociety is becoming increasingly aware of the negative environmental impacts of carbon emissions.With increasing public awareness, corporate social responsibility, emissions reporting and the presence of carbon trading schemes and carbon taxes, minimizing operational carbon emissions could be considered to be prudent. By adopting appropriate practices, emissions from equipment, the major pollutant source in earthmoving operations, can be reduced.In earthmoving, and the related quarrying and open-cut mining operations, extensive work has been conducted on predicting cycle times and production for fleets of equipment, and determining fleet sizes within a minimum cost per production criterion (Nunnally, 2010;Chanda and Gardiner, 2010;Carmichael, 1987). Recently attention has turned to also looking at equipment emissions associated with production.There are a number of published studies that quantify earthmoving equipment emissions, and studies have been performed to obtain practical emissions data related to specific activities such as equipment idling, hauling and loading. These are reviewed below, and selective data are used in the numerical example given to determine emissions for different fleet sizes, and fleet sizes that minimize emissions per production to enable a comparison with minimum cost per production fleet sizes.

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