Worldwide demand for cobalt used in batteries has caused rocketing mining emissions. Now the pollution from African copper mines where cobalt is also extracted can be monitored from space
Emissions associated with mining operations in Africa’s Copperbelt can be quantified from space, according to new research led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).
The new open-access study is published in Geophysical Research Letters, and shows for the first time that satellite monitoring can provide valuable information on the impact of the copper and cobalt mining boom on air quality in nearby towns and villages. Research also opens the door to the possibility of remotely monitoring increases and decreases in mining activities in a region of the world where surface monitoring is scarce and reporting by mine operators can be inconsistent or altogether absent.
Mining for copper and cobalt in Africa has rapidly increased in response to huge demand for electric vehicles, laptops, smartphones, and devices that rely on lithium-ion batteries, the vast majority of which contain cobalt.
Africa’s Copperbelt straddles Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, which produced 73% of the world’s supply of cobalt in 2022, according to the Cobalt Institute. Cobalt production in the Copperbelt increased about 600% between 1990 and 2021, according to data from the US Bureau of Mines and the US Geological Survey.
The vast majority of cobalt is produced as a byproduct of copper mining, though some copper mines do not produce any cobalt.
Most of the energy consumed in copper and cobalt mining – including the operation of large machinery and electricity production – is generated by burning diesel fuel, which produces large amounts of NOx emissions.
To quantify the emissions, the research team turned to data from the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) onboard the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Sentinel-5 Precursor satellite (S-5P). TROPOMI can monitor a number of trace gases important for air quality, including NOx.
While biomass burning, urban activity, and other industrial operations beyond mining also produce NOx—as do some natural processes—the researchers found that they could distinguish the emissions from copper and cobalt mines in the data. They also found that the annual emissions from each mine strongly correlated with their annual metal production
“We thought that these copper and cobalt mining operations could affect local air quality; we just didn’t know how much given the lack of ground monitoring in the region,” said NCAR scientist Sara Martínez-Alonso, who is the study’s lead author.
Copper is one of the world’s most important industrial minerals, and Africa is an important world producer. While output is traditionally dominated by Zambia, South Africa and Katanga Province in the south of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, many African nations contribute to copper production, and many African nations have undeveloped ore resources.
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