Underground climatic monitoring and modeling: Are we missing something?

Pedram Roghanchi, Karoly C. Kocsis, George Danko, Andrew Powell

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

There are many instruments on the market and possibilities available to measure and assess the underground ventilation and environmental parameters. These options include small handheld units for spot measurements, data logging type monitors and realtime monitoring systems (e.g. fiber optic). Selecting the most appropriate climatic monitoring system depends mainly on the purpose of climatic monitoring, the magnitude of the mines’ heat load, monitoring locations and cost. However, there are several occurrences that cannot be captured when simple spot units are being used for climatic monitoring purposes. This includes the “thermal damping effect”, time-dependent dynamic heat exchanges between the ventilating air and surrounding environments, as well as unknown sharp temperature increases during production cycles. These elements are particularly important to predict the underground climatic conditions in future underground mines. Even if these phenomena are identified and quantified based on in-situ measurements, the key question still remains: How can we take them into account at the modeling phase through the use of standard mine ventilation and climatic simulation programs such as Climsim™, Ventsim™, Vuma™ and MULTIFLUX™? This paper aims to discuss the importance of continuous climatic monitoring in underground mines based on observations of the above-mentioned phenomena and highlight whether these cases have noticeable impact on the overall climatic conditions in underground mines. Discussions will be based on over six months of climatic data, which was collected at an underground mine in the State of Nevada, USA. Multi-channel climatic monitoring units were installed along vertical and horizontal airways from surface to the lowest production level of this mine. The monitoring units were installed in key locations to measure critical ventilation and climatic parameters needed for modeling work. Comparisons were performed between the ventilation and climatic data collected underground and parameters generated by ventilation and thermal models through the use of simulation techniques. Finally, the importance of developing a time-dependent dynamic ventilation-thermal-humidity (VTH) model was analyzed and discussed. This dynamic VTH model will be used to assess various cooling strategies and identify the most effective cooling and refrigeration methods, which can be economically employed in deep and hot mines.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)133-139
Number of pages7
JournalQuality - Access to Success
Volume18
StatePublished - 2017

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© SRAC - Societatea Romana Pentru Asigurarea Calitatii. All rights reserved.

Funding

This study was funded by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). The authors gratefully acknowledge our partner mines for their contributions to this study.

FundersFunder number
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

    Keywords

    • Climatic conditions
    • Continuous climatic monitoring
    • Tansient heat exchange processes
    • Thermal damping effect
    • Underground mining

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Management Information Systems
    • Business and International Management
    • Strategy and Management

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