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原文传递 Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of Ore Transportation Route Alternatives for Eagle Mine.

题名：	Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of Ore Transportation Route Alternatives for Eagle Mine.
作者：	Oduru, S. K.; Lautala, P.
关键词：	Road transportation, Fossil fuels
摘要：	Transportation sector at large is a major consumer of fossil fuels and constitutes more than a quarter of the global greenhouse gas emissions. When making infrastructure route and mode choice decisions for new freight-oriented projects, it is important that emissions analysis is included as an integral part of the selection process. The most logical time for emissions analysis is during modal and route selections that are often made in the planning stage of a project. One component of such an analysis can be Life Cycle Assessment (LCA); a method for estimating emissions, energy consumption and other environmental impacts of a project over its life cycle. A major drawback of performing a detailed LCA comprising of all life cycle phases of a freight transportation project is the requirement for extensive data, human effort and expertise. Availability of resources and data required for LCA often tends to be a challenge at such early stage of the projects. This could be a discouraging factor for the stakeholders, resulting in simply neglect of an LCA evaluation. This research applies the LCA evaluation toward transportation options of existing mining operations in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. More specifically, it performs a comparative life cycle assessment of three different route alternatives for transporting copper/nickel ore from Eagle mine to Humboldt mill to quantify the potential environmental impacts of the transportation activities in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. The alternatives included the currently used highway route (CR-550), an alternative highway route (CR-595) considered in the planning stage of the mine, and a conceptual rail route designed for the purpose of this study. This assessment was performed using two different methods; Detailed LCA and Operational LCA. The Detailed LCA incorporated the emissions arising from the complete life cycle of the transportation activity, including the construction, operation and maintenance phases of both Infrastructure and equipment. This method used SimaPro version 8 software along with Ecoinvent v3.1 database and several other custom datasets created using regional and study specific data. It is apparent from previous research that emissions from the 鈥淥perations鈥?phase often account for a major portion of the overall impacts, so part of this research investigates whether a process that includes only the Operations phase emissions would still provide reliable outcomes. The Operational LCA method considered the emissions only from the operations phase activities and the life cycle of the fuels used from well to wheel. This method used the in-built database of GREET 2016 model, along with case specific data on fuel consumption and type of vehicles used. The LCA was performed for the currently expected mine life of 8 years and also for 9, 10, 15, and 20-year mine lives, as the ongoing explorations around the mine may offer potential for mine life extension(s).
报告类型：	科技报告