El medio ambiente en la minería

EL MEDIO AMBIENTE EN LA MINERIA 124 3. Achieving cost savings through a reduction of energy consumption, fuel conversion and personnel cu18. At present, Toyo Smelter trea18 50,000 tonnes of concentrate, equivalent to two times the original capacity, produces 22,000 tonnes of anodes which are provided to the Toyo Refinery and Niihama Refinery and 50,000 tonnes of sulphuric acid a month. This is done in a system using 170 employees with one Outokumpu type flash fumace, three Pierce-Smith type converters and one Chemico-type acid plant, in which 99.9% of the charged sulphur is stably captured. Sumitomo's copper mining and metallurgicaI activity commenced in 1690with the discovery of the Besshi copper mine. During the 300 years since that time, Sumitomo people have paid special attention to harmonizing with the com– munity around i18 activity site. In 1893, a westem style smelter was built in Niihama but an air pollution problem resulted. In an effort to prevent the air pollution, the smelter was transfered in 1905 to Shisakajima !sland, a remote site Iocated 18 km from Niihama, but the problem was not overcome until the installation of a Peterson-type acid plant in 1929. In consideration to these historical struggles for pollution prevention, the construction ofToyo Smelter was started in 1969, and completed in 1971. Significant attention and much effort was paid to Toyo Smelter's designo Continuous effor18 over the past 20 years at environmental pollution preven– tion and being a dean smelter let Toyo Smelter enjoya high reputation as one of the deanest and most pollution-free smelters anywhere as well as being one of the most advanced and productive smelters in the world. 118 S02 emission rate to the total sulphur charged in the smelter is only 0.1 % and i18 emission volume is far below the regulation value of 80 Nm 3 /H. l. REGULATIONS ENVIRONMENTAL STANDARDS In J apan, environmental standards on air and water are prescribed to protect people's health and life environment, as show in table 1. These standards guarantee that the public can enjoya healthy life in the inhabited areas.