Field Verification of an Improved Mine Fire Location Model
- PDF / 1,012,588 Bytes
- 8 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 35 Downloads / 277 Views
Field Verification of an Improved Mine Fire Location Model D. Bahrami 1
&
L. Zhou 1 & L. Yuan 1
Received: 26 May 2020 / Accepted: 16 September 2020 # This is a U.S. government work and its text is not subject to copyright protection in the United States; however, its text may be subject to foreign copyright protection 2020
Abstract Underground mine fires remain a concern for mine operators, posing a health and safety risk to mineworkers. In the last decade, the number of mine fires has decreased significantly; however, dealing with an unknown fire in underground mines can be a challenging task, which could lead to a hazardous condition for miners during an evacuation and rescue operation. A timely detection of a mine fire and monitoring its characteristics, namely size and location, are of great importance in reducing the risk of mine fire injuries. A new improved fire location algorithm has been developed and integrated into an Atmospheric Monitoring System (AMS) program by researchers from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). This paper describes the new fire location model and presents the results of verification fire tests conducted at the Safety Research Coal Mine (SRCM) facility of the Pittsburgh Mining Research Division (PMRD) using the collected AMS data. NIOSH is endeavoring to develop workplace solutions to improve detection of and reduce the risk of hazardous conditions in mines. The results demonstrate successful application of the improved fire location model and provide a useful tool for solving the problem of unknown fire location and reducing the risk of hazardous conditions. Keywords Mine fire . Ventilation network . Modeling . Contaminant spread . Fire location
1 Introduction Mine fires remain a health and safety threat to underground miners despite the decreasing trend in the number of fire-related injuries in mining in the last decade. Mine fires produce significant levels of toxic gases and smoke that can be carried throughout the mine by the airflow through the ventilation network, easily reaching faraway locations from the fire source, as well as air reversal, increasing the hazard potential for miners [1]. Equipment fires have been recognized as being responsible for most mining injuries during 2000–2013 [2]. To reduce fire-caused injuries in underground mines, it is important to ensure the safety of the underground mine environment during a fire incident. Characterizing an underground mine atmosphere during a fire event was reviewed by Timko and Derick [3] in terms of methodology, sampling methods, and equations to detect the fire and determine the fuel type. The mine-wide Atmospheric Monitoring System (AMS) is employed in underground mines for monitoring air quality parameters such as air velocity and methane concentration,
* D. Bahrami [email protected] 1
CDC NIOSH, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
as well as detection of a fire. The AMS comprises strategically located mine-wide environmental and air quality sensors to measure and monitor the atmospheric parameters. Th
Data Loading...
