Design of solar pond for water preheating used in the copper cathodes washing at a mining operation at Sierra Gorda, Chile

The Chilean copper industry is increasingly dependent on coal-generated electricity and diesel fuel for high altitude mining operations. The associated greenhouse gas emission expansion needs to be moderated, moving away from polluting imported energy sources. As an option, solar thermal energy is breaking through in mining processes, and several companies plan to evaluate the application of ponds among potential technologies. In this work, we propose the studied the performance of solar ponds to preheat water to wash the copper cathodes in a mine located in Sierra Gorda aiming to reduce fuel consumption and combustion emissions. The outcome was a dual array of solar ponds with an effective collecting area of 23 240 m2 and a 1.8 m thick density gradient to prevent heat convection. The ponds could deliver up to 12 300 MW h/year on site, reducing the annual diesel demand by 77% with a collecting efficiency of 24%, avoiding 3300 tonnes of CO2, thus reducing the cost of the thermal kilowatt-hour by 37%. Futur...

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