Low carbon after-life – overview and first results of project LoCAL

The LoCAL Project "Sustainable Use of Flooded Coal Mine Voids as a Thermal Energy Source - a Baseline Activity for Minimising Post-Closure Environmental Risks" aims at providing bespoke tools for investigating flow and heat transfer in flooded mine workings. New tools for quantifying and modelling heat transfer in networks of flooded mine workings are under development Another aim of the LoCAL project is to overcome the hydrochemical barriers to effective heat transfer from raw and treated mine waters. Ochre clogging is a well-known phenomenon which affects a lot of mine water heating and cooling systems. The LoCAL project not only covers technical and engineering issues, but also provides economic and management models for efficient energy extraction and distribution. Technical, legal, managerial and cost-benefit analyses of various types of decentralised and centralised heat pump systems are being carried out. Project activities are being simultaneously undertaken in mining areas of the UK by research organizations in partnership with industrial enterprises (University of Glasgow in partnership with Alkane Energy Ltd.), Spain (University of Oviedo, with HUNOSA as the industrial partner) as well as in Poland (Central Mining Institute, in partnership with Armada Development). The current paper describes first project outcomes of the three areas mentioned above.