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Title: Methodology for the environmental assessment of advanced coal extraction systems

Technical Report ·
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/5174603· OSTI ID:5174603

This document describes the methodology which was developed to identify and assess potential environmental impacts of advanced mining technology as it moves from a generic concept to a more precise systems definition. Two levels of assessment are defined in terms of the design stage of the technology being evaluated. The first level of analysis is appropriate to a conceptual design. At this level it is assumed that each mining process has known and potential environmental impacts that are generic to each mining activity. By using this assumption, potential environmental impacts can be identified for new mining systems. When two or more systems have been assessed, they can be evaluated by comparing potential environmental impacts. At the preliminary stage of design, a systems performance can be assessed again with more precision. At this level of systems definition, potential environmental impacts can be analyzed and their significance determined in a manner to facilitate comparisons between systems. An important output of each level of analysis is suggestions calculated to help the designer mitigate potentially harmful impacts.

Research Organization:
California Institute of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States). Jet Propulsion Lab. (JPL)
DOE Contract Number:
AI01-76ET12548
OSTI ID:
5174603
Report Number(s):
JPL-PUB-79-82
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English