Exercise (Stella)

1. In coal mines during the pre-mining process have to open the top spoil and external overburden
shall and transport in to the storage piles, which is 710x106 m3 for the maximum storage, but it has
some old soil storage about 14x103 m3. The mining manager has planning to do the removing and keep
it for 160m3/day and do some soil selling about 75m3/day.

Answer this two questions:

1) How many tons of soil has store in the stockpile after one year?
2) How long this storage pile can keep the top soil and external overburden shall until
maximum storage?

Mass balance equation

dS
IQ 
dt
or

I  Qdt  dS

when

I = Inflow rate (m3/s)

Q = Outflow rate (m3/s)

ds/dt = rate of change in storage (m3/s)

do the Integrate
𝑡 𝑆
(𝐼 − 𝑄) ∫ 𝑑𝑡 = ∫ 𝑑𝑆
0 14𝐸3

𝑡 𝑆
= 1 ∫ 𝑑𝑆
∫ 𝑑𝑡 (𝐼 − 𝑄) 14𝐸3
0
1
𝑡 = (𝑆 − 14𝐸3)
(𝐼 − 𝑄)
1
𝑡 = (𝑆 − 14𝐸3)
(160 − 75)
2. A person consumes electrical energy about 200 kWh/month. The electrical energy is generated by
using lignite as the fuel. The energy content of the lignite is 15 MJ/kg. The power plant that uses the
lignite has the efficiency 85%. At present, the population of a country is 10 million. Birth rate and
dead rate of the population are 1.5% and 0.9% respectively. Each person generates about 1.5 kg/d of
solid waste which can be used to generate electricity. The energy content of the solid waste is 2
MJ/kg. Use the Stella to simulate the annual amount of coal used to generate electricity for 50 years