Impact of Enhanced Production from the Opencast Coal Mines on Ambient Particulate Emissions

Abstract

Coal still continues to be the major source of energy needs. It is estimated that power sector alone would require about 900 Mt of coal by the year 2025. Such large quantity requires more surface mines causing the load on environment. Among the various environmental factors, air pollution is one of the most important parameters to be considered and the estimation of emissions from a mine at various stages of its operations is vital which helps in taking preventive measures against pollution. Given the significance of mining as a source of particulates, accurate characterization of emissions is important for the development of appropriate emission estimation techniques for use in modeling predictions and for regulatory decisions. Estimation of emissions in the ambient air quality with regard to enhanced production needs to be established regionally. Keeping this in view, two opencast coal mines in South India are selected to evaluate the emissions of PM<inf>10</inf> and PM<inf>2.5</inf> in the ambient air due to increased coal production and overburden removal. Emissions for these two mines have been studied from the year 2012 to 2019. It was observed that the PM<inf>10</inf> values ranged from 152 to 229 µg/m3 in the core zone and 71 to 98.2 µg/m3in the buffer zone. Similarly, PM<inf>2.5</inf> values ranged from 49.4 to 80.9 µg/m3in the core zone and 25.3 to 55.3 µg/m3 in the buffer zone. Particulate emissions have increased proportionately with respect to the quantity of coal produced and overburden removed. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.