Clean energy recovery in mining

Currently in the United States and across the world, clean energy is being pushed to the forefront as an environmental necessity for all facets of life. Clean energy generation that utilizes wind and solar, are faced with problems of geography and consistency. If we shift the idea of wind generation sourced from the weather into using wind turbines to “recapture” lost energy from underground mining processes, we can utilize a clean energy into resupplying the grid or equivalently lowering the current demand of energy that underground mining processes require. For demonstrating the concept, a coal mine in northern West Virginia is selected as a test bed and real historical data of ventilating air quantities, types of ventilation fans and energy costs related to ventilation are gathered. In this paper, we provide cost benefit analysis for energy recovery for the electric grid and mining industry thus improving regional economy, and show that such ventures can have less environmental impacts, improve efficiency and reduce losses.