Underground mines in Arctic and Subarctic regions require the preheating of mine intake air during winter. The cold fresh air of those remote areas can be as severe as −40 °C and commonly needs to be heated to around +3 °C. This extensive amount of heating is usually provided by employing large-size air heaters, fueled by diesel, propane, natural gas, or heavy oil, leading to high energy costs and large carbon footprints. At the same time, the thermal energy content of a diesel generator sets (gen-sets) exhaust is known to be one-third of the total heating value of its combusted fuel. Exhaust heat recovery from diesel gen-sets is a growing technology that seeks to mitigate the energy costs by capturing and redirecting this commonly rejected exhaust heat to other applications such as space heating or pre-heating of the mine intake air. The present study investigated the possibility of employing a simple system based on off-the-shelf heat exchanger technology, which can recover the waste heat from the exhaust of the power generation units (diesel gen-sets) in an off-grid, cold, remote mine in Canada for heating of the mine intake air. Data from a real mine was used for the analysis along with environmental data of three different location-scenarios with distinct climates. After developing a thermodynamic model, the heat savings were calculated, and an economic feasibility evaluation was performed. The proposed system was found highly viable with annual savings of up to C$6.7 million and capable enough to provide an average of around 75% of the heating demand for mine intake air, leading to a payback period of about eleven months or less for all scenarios. Deployment of seasonal thermal energy storage has also been recommended to mitigate the mismatch between supply and demand, mainly in summertime, possibly allowing the system to eliminate fuel costs for intake air heating.

北极和亚北极地区的地下矿井在冬季需要对矿井进气进行预热。这些偏远地区的新鲜冷空气可能高达−40°C，通常需要加热到+3°C左右。通常通过使用大型空气加热器来提供这种大量的热量，这些加热器由柴油，丙烷，天然气或重油作为燃料，从而导致高能源成本和大碳足迹。同时，已知柴油发电机组（发电机组）排气的热能含量为其燃烧燃料的总热值的三分之一。柴油发电机组的余热回收是一项不断发展的技术，其目的是通过捕获并重新分配通常被拒绝的余热并将其重新定向到其他应用程序，例如空间加热或矿井进气的预热，来降低能源成本。本研究调查了采用基于现成热交换器技术的简单系统的可能性，该系统可以在离网，寒冷，恶劣的环境中从发电装置（柴油发电机组）的废气中回收废热。加拿大的偏远矿井，用于加热矿井的进气。来自真实矿山的数据与三种具有不同气候的不同地理位置的环境数据一起用于分析。建立了热力学模型后，计算了热量节省，并进行了经济可行性评估。提议的系统非常可行，每年可节省多达670万加元，并且能够提供平均约75％的矿井进气供热需求，因此所有方案的投资回收期均不超过11​​个月或更短。