Decarbonization in mining still a long way off
Mining News Pro - A lack of consistent data to measure emissions down the supply chain of mining companies and through to customers makes it difficult to monitor and meet targets for decarbonizing the sector, industry executives and investors said on Thursday.
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Rio Tinto, Sumitomo to make low-carbon alumina at Queensland refinery
Mining News Pro - Rio Tinto said on Wednesday it would build a hydrogen plant in Gladstone, Queensland along with Japan’s Sumitomo Corporation, as the miner seeks to minimize carbon emissions at its Yarwun alumina refinery.
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Rio Tinto, Sumitomo to make low-carbon alumina at Queensland refinery
Mining News Pro - Rio Tinto said on Wednesday it would build a hydrogen plant in Gladstone, Queensland along with Japan’s Sumitomo Corporation, as the miner seeks to minimize carbon emissions at its Yarwun alumina refinery.
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Rio Tinto look to low carbon future
Mining News Pro - Major miner Rio Tinto is looking into the role that steel and iron ore will play in creating an energy efficient future.
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Carbon-capture plants also have harmful emissions — but there is a solution
Mining News Pro - In a paper published in the journal Science Advances, the researchers explain that amines are compounds used in the chemical processes of carbon-capture plants and natural gas processing and refining plants. Amines are also used in certain pharmaceuticals, epoxy resins, and dyes.
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The problem is that amines could also be potentially harmful to the environment as well as a health hazard, making it essential to mitigate their impact. This requires accurate monitoring and predicting of a plant’s amine emissions, which has proven to be no easy feat since carbon-capture plants are complex and differ from one another.
This is where the new development comes in.
Tested in Niederhauẞen, on one of the largest coal-fired power plants in Germany, the solution was used for a full year to monitor a slipstream that is sent from the power station into a carbon capture pilot plant.
Stress test
The scientists created a stress test to study amine emissions under different process conditions. “We developed an experimental campaign to understand how and when amine emissions would be generated. But some of our experiments also caused interventions of the plant’s operators to ensure the plant was operating safely,” Susana Garcia, co-author of the study, said in a media statement.
These interventions led to the question of how to interpret the data. Are the amine emissions the result of the stress test itself, or have the interventions of the operators indirectly affected the emissions? This was further complicated by a general lack of understanding of the mechanisms behind amine emissions.
“In short, we had an expensive and successful campaign that showed that amine emissions can be a problem, but no tools to further analyze the data,” study co-author Berend Smit said. “When Susana Garcia mentioned this to me, it sounded indeed like an impossible problem to solve. But she also mentioned that they measured everything every five minutes, collecting many data.”
Looking for patterns
With the help of PhD student Kevin Maik Jablonka, the group developed a machine-learning approach that turned the amine emissions puzzle into a pattern-recognition problem.
“We wanted to know what the emissions would be if we did not have the stress test but only the operators’ interventions,” Smit explained. “This is a similar issue as we can have in finance; for example, if you want to evaluate the effect of changes in the tax code, you would like to disentangle the effect of the tax code from, say, interventions caused by the crisis in Ukraine.”
In the next step, Jablonka used powerful machine learning to predict future amine emissions from the plant’s data.
With this model, the team was able to predict the emissions caused by the interventions of the operators and then disentangle them from those induced by the stress test. They were also able to use the model to run all kinds of scenarios for reducing these emissions.
The conclusion of this work was described as “surprising”. As it turned out, the pilot plant had been designed for pure amine, but the measuring experiments were carried out on a mixture of two amines: 2-amino-2-methyl-1-propanol and piperazine. The scientists found out that those two amines respond in opposite ways: reducing the emission of one increases the emissions of the other.
“I am very enthusiastic about the potential impact of this work; it is a completely new way of looking at a complex chemical process,” Smit said. “This type of forecasting is not something one can do with any of the conventional approaches, so it may change the way we operate chemical plants.”
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Rusal eyes rising demand for low-carbon aluminum in China
Mining News Pro - Russian aluminum giant Rusal is looking to supply more low-carbon aluminum to China amid friendly ties and rising demand for the metal from the country’s electric vehicle firms, a Rusal manager said on Friday.
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Steel industry united in opposing bloc’s carbon border levy
Mining News Pro -"If the steel industry complains, it either means that it does not want to decarbonise or that it has not read the text," conservative German MEP Peter Liese told a press conference on Monday (19 December).
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Nippon Steel to start making low-carbon ingredients for green steel
Mining News Pro -Japan's Nippon Steel Corp (5401.T) plans to start making low-carbon raw materials, such as "reduced iron" produced using hydrogen, to meet growing demand for so-called green steel, it said on Thursday.
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ِDecarbonization Story
Is decarbonization Europe's impossible dream?
Mining News Pro - Swedish steel is considered the world’s toughest. It may soon become its greenest. In Boden, a town near the Arctic Circle, a startup called h2 Green Steel (h2gs) is erecting a €4bn ($4bn) new mill, Europe’s first in nearly half a century.
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BMW invests in low carbon copper firm Jetti
Mining News Pro - BMW, which is aiming for at least half of its vehicles to be all-electric by 2030, did not disclose the size of the investment in privately held Jetti taken by its venture capital fund BMW i Ventures.
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Tech start-ups tap into Australian minerals sector’s need to decarbonise
Mining News Pro - Founder of energy-saver Plotlogic says industry is ‘posturing’ over plans to be more efficient
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Anglo updates on decarbonisation, biodiversity, responsible mining
Mining News Pro - In 1918, Anglo set a target to reduce GHG emissions by 30% by 2030, on its pathway to achieving carbon neutrality across operations by 2040.
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Mining industry on track to meet decarbonization targets, say analysts
Mining News Pro - The availability of risk capital for miners is biased towards those with concrete plans for achieving net-zero emissions targets by 2030, says Keith Russell, global director for energy transition, purpose and performance with Partners in Performance.
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Rio Tinto, Ford to develop battery, low-carbon materials supply chain
Mining News Pro - Rio Tinto and Ford Motor Company have signed a non-binding global memorandum of understanding (MOU) to jointly develop more sustainable and secure supply chains for battery and low-carbon materials to be used in Ford vehicles.
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Teck tests carbon capture use and storage at Canadian operations
Mining News Pro - Teck Resources, Canada’s largest diversified miner, has set a carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) pilot project at its metallurgical complex in southern British Columbia.
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Trudeau’s energy chief unveils low-carbon industrial strategy
Mining News Pro - Canada is launching an industrial strategy for its natural resources, with critical mineral infrastructure, hydrogen production and other low-carbon projects set to be a major focus.
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China’s crucial role in decarbonising the global steel sector
Mining News Pro - As the world’s top steel producer, China must step up to reduce the sector’s emissions and lead on greening the industry, write E3G analysts
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Delta CleanTech, Muskowekwan First Nation partner on carbon capture blockchain project
Mining News Pro - Calgary-headquartered Delta CleanTech is planning to launch a multi-million dollar carbon credit blockchain initiative with Canada’s First Nations communities.
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Can mining clean up its carbon footprint?
Mining News Pro - Mining remains one of the most energy-intensive industries in Australia. Can the industry clean up its carbon footprint?
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MKS PAMP first precious metals refinery to set SBTi-approved carbon emissions reduction targets
Mining News Pro - MKS PAMP, provider of financial and physical trading services and precious metals refinery, announced Wednesday that it is the first precious metals company in the world to have SBTi approved carbon emissions reduction targets, committing to a 1.5°C emissions reduction in line with the Paris Agreement.
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Canada, industry in talks to cement future carbon price hikes
Mining News Pro - The Canadian government is in talks with heavy industrial emitters about ways to ensure Ottawa’s planned carbon price increases will remain in place even if Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government is voted out of power.
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Carbon-neutral biosurfactants may help boost mineral extraction from low-grade ores
Mining News Pro - Cleantech company Locus Fermentation Solutions announced the launching of a new mining operating division whose focus will be on developing and commercializing carbon-neutral biosurfactant additives to boost mineral extraction from low-grade ores.
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Austria’s Brixlegg launches low-carbon copper, seeks premium
Mining News Pro - Montanwerke Brixlegg AG aims to charge a premium for its copper, which has the lowest carbon footprint in the industry, an executive of the Austrian company said on Wednesday.
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Committing to carbon neutrality, venturing into forward-facing commodities is miners’ way to stay in business
Mining News Pro - Cutting their own emissions is the most effective way for miners to respond to climate change, White & Case’s annual Mining & Metals Survey found.
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DOE backs Rio Tinto led investigation into carbon storage at Minnesota nickel project
Mining News Pro - The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded $2.2 million in funding to a team led by Rio Tinto (ASX: RIO; NYSE: RIO) to investigate carbon storage potential at the Tamarack nickel project in Minnesota. The project is a joint venture of Rio Tinto (81.5%) and Talon Metals (TSX: TLO) (18.5%). The advanced exploration project is located about 85 km west of Duluth.
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