Water and energy synergy and trade-off potentials in mine water management

Limited research has been conducted to develop a tool or approach to consider water and energy impacts of water initiatives in a coupled manner. This paper presents a protocol to recognise water-energy synergy and trade-off potentials. The protocol is demonstrated for three case study mine sites. The results of this paper show that a particular water management option can hold a synergy potential for one mine but a trade-off potential for another mine. The rigour of the approach captures cases where water management options are predicted to be synergistic, but are in fact shown to be a trade-off according to the results. It is concluded that the use of this protocol can provide insights about synergy and trade-off potentials between water and energy targets of mine sites subject to water management options. This is an innovative approach to more holistically assess water management option impacts.