Estimación del potencial energético para la incorporación de energía renovable en los procesos de producción de los principales minerales en el Ecuador.

Abstract

Human activities generate greenhouse gases that accumulate in the atmosphere, and if we do not reduce these gases to near pre-industrial levels, the consequences of climate change will be devastating for humanity. One such activity is mining. Among the main environmental problems related to mining are high energy consumption, which leads to high greenhouse gas emissions and possible energy shortages for other activities. Ecuador has initiated large-scale copper mining with the Mirador Project. This work seeks to determine the feasibility of applying renewable energies for copper processing in this project. The activities and machinery present in each stage of the processing plant are analyzed, a list of the equipment and an energy inventory by equipment, stage and total consumption of the plant are made. The solar energy potential in the sector where the project is located is estimated, and three photovoltaic systems are designed to cover different levels of energy demand. The energy inventory shows that the energy demand is 218053.31 MWh/y, with the milling stage having the highest consumption with 1668192 MWh/y. The solar energy potential of the project sector is 3.91 kW/m2/day. The most feasible design is 6 floating photovoltaic systems placed on the tailings deposit, which covers an area of 97.89 ha (0.92% of the project area) and generates 221658 MWh/y, enough to cover the energy demand with an overproduction of 3604.69 MWh/y.