Environmental Comparison of Different Transportation Systems—Truck-Shovel and IPCCs—In Open-Pit Mines by System Dynamic Modeling

The environmental challenges in mining activities are one of the most important concerns in mining design, and in some extent that planning without considering environmental issues cannot be an optimized one. The transportation system in mining projects, which is counted as one of the most significant parts of mining activities, is evaluated as one of the sources of environmental problems. Accordingly, in this paper, common transportation equipment in mines, which are trucks and conveyor belts, are evaluated in different types of transportation systems, i.e., Truck-Shovel, Fixed In-Pit Crushing and Conveying (FIPCC), Semi-Fixed In-Pit Crushing and Conveying (SFIPCC), Semi-Mobile In-Pit Crushing and Conveying (SMIPCC), and Fully Mobile In-Pit Crushing and Conveying (FMIPCC) systems. The environmental index, which is the indicator of the environmental condition while using each transportation system, is introduced and compared in these systems. System dynamics modeling, as a powerful tool for simulating the behavior of a system through the time, is used to model the transportation system of an open-pit mine. For this, different variables and their connections in the system are described. It was shown that these transportation systems differently behave in the case of environmental index such that FMIPCC stood in the first rank while the Truck-Shovel system was ranked the fifth. System dynamics modeling can be utilized in the making decision process, which the planners want to evaluate the behavior of the system in different scenarios. This method is capable to give an insight into the current and future state of the system for any alternative.