Innovations in electricity supply
Electricity is vital to our business. At a number of locations our operations either generate their own power or are significant in the regional power demand. At many of these operations there has been a history of electricity supply innovation through integration of combined heat and power requirements, utilisation of waste heat, re-firing of boilers and furnaces with natural gas, development of hydro and geothermal schemes, wind farm investigation and substitution with "Green tag" power.
Current innovation activities in electricity supply and other activities include:
- Assessment of the application of wind power at remote mine locations (Rio Tinto Foundation for a Sustainable Minerals Industry (RTFSMI) project).
- Investigation of enhanced bio-fixation of carbon dioxide, offering the potential to produce renewable fuels from accelerated production of biomass (RTFSMI project).
- Early research being conducted for Rio Tinto Aluminium into bauxite residue as a potential sequestration sink for Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) power plants.
- Production and storage of hydrogen for distribution as a clean fuel, including photochemical hydrogen production and hydrogen from by-product streams.
- Global Energy Technology Strategy Programme: This is a long term international research programme assessing the role that technology can play in addressing the long term risks of climate change by understanding the interactions among energy, technology, the economy, natural resources, land use and climate change - see http://www.pnl.gov/gtsp/.
- Carbon sequestration leadership forum: This forum aims to implement a cooperative global approach to accelerate the development and deployment of technologies to capture and sequester carbon emissions - see http://www.cslforum.org/.
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