Abstract

Energy conservation is a national strategy for every country. To avoid shortage of energy and high prices, the green sustainable energy resources have become the center of attention. Mining as a prominent industry in Canada consumes a huge amount of energy, so any reduction in energy consumption would result in higher production and profit. In 2005, Hassani of McGill University proposed the use of mine stopes as the heat exchange area for the production of low temperature geothermal energy, since the extraction of ore/ rocks and the backfilling is a part of normal mining operation, then the very low cost associated with the implementation of such system, will make it very viable for mining industry. This work is in collaboration with energy research team of professor Hassani of McGill University (EMERG). This is a part of an overall research program on low temperature geothermal energy from mines. The research was focused primarily on investigating and obtaining a range values for thermal conductivity of different mine backfills, as well as the effect of some of the associated physical parameters. More than 800 samples and 2000 measurements were done on different backfills with different physical properties. This preliminary investigation indicates that pulp density, binder consumption, curing time, and sodium silicate content have negligible to slight influence on the thermal conductivity of backfill. However parameters such as saturation, and to a lesser extent porosity and the thermal conductivity of the inert material, have more significant influence.