Determination of the emission rate from various opencast mining operations

A study was carried out to determine the emission rate and develop an empirical formulae to calculate the emission rate of various opencast mining activities. The results of the study can be utilized by the mine environmental engineers and scientists working in the field of air quality monitoring for the advance prediction of a likely impact due to any upcoming project. To achieve the objectives, seven coal and three iron ore mining sites have been selected to generate emission data for major mining activities by considering type of mining, method of working, geographical location, accessibility and above all resource availability. Based on the study a set of 12 empirical formulae has been developed for the calculation of the suspended particulate matter emission rate from various opencast coal/mineral mining activities. The emission of gaseous pollutants (sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide) has been found to be negligible for various mining activities. Therefore, observation for gaseous pollutants has been considered for overall mining activities and subsequently empirical formulae have been developed. Validation of the developed empirical formulae has been carried out by conducting a field study at the Rajpura mine. The measured and calculated values of the emission rate have been compared for each activity. The average accuracy between the measured and calculated values for different activities has been found to vary between 77.2 and 80.4%. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.