Track: Undergraduate Student Paper Competition

Abstract

The prospective is a tool that allows to generate future scenarios; however, there are only few studies regarding a prospective for the copper mining sector.  The Mining sector is very important for Peru, since it contributes 10% to the national GDP and represents 65.7% of all exports. However, the processing of copper generates large environmental impacts, such as: gaseous emissions, particulate matter, dumping and hazardous solid waste. On the other hand, this is a strategic prospective study with a mixed approach, in order to determine future sustainable copper mining scenarios and contribute to the improvement of sustainability. In the methodology, the MICMAC was used to determine the key variables, the Mactor and Smic-Prob-Expert software to play the game between actors and define future scenarios respectively. For this reason, it is suggested that mining companies optimize the roasting, fusion and conversion processes. In addition, it is suggested that they control the management of contaminants in the copper concentrate, as well as increase the efficiency of the acid plant to levels greater than 99.99%. Finally, 64 scenarios have been generated, of which it was considered that scenario 1 is the best sustainable scenario for the copper mining industry, since it has the highest probability of occurrence with 0.481 and it is where all the hypotheses are fulfilled.