Project Info

IMURF – Mine Dust Measurement with Location Tracking

Jürgen Brune | jbrune@mines.edu

Coal miners have a high prevalence of lung diseases, and it is rising. We are combining a personal dust monitor (PDM) with a location tracking system to identify sources of dust in underground mines. This project involves industrial hygiene, mining engineering, mine ventilation, radio and GPS tracking and geodetics. I am working with an industrial hygienist from CO state, mining engineering and electrical engineering faculty and graduate students.

For more information:
The U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration, MSHA, mandates the use of continuous personal dust monitors, PDM, in underground mines to verify compliance with mandatory respirable dust standards. Regulation 30 CFR §70.100 establishes a limit of 1.5 mg/m3 averaged over an 8-hr working shift. Miners who work in dusty conditions are required to wear the PDM for several shifts each month to document that they are not overexposed to respirable dust.
The PDM uses frequency changes in a tapered element oscillating microbalance (TEOM) to measure inhaled dust concentrations in 1-minute intervals indicated on a display. Researchers at the Colorado School of Mines are combining PDM output with location information from the underground miner tracking system to identify locations of high dust exposure. They display the combined information of dust concentration and location in “heat” maps to inform miners and mine management of hazardous dust sources. Management can eliminate dust hot-spots through improved ventilation, sprays, scrubbers or other engineering and administrative controls.
Researchers proved the dust localization concept by designing a radio frequency identification (RFID) based miner tracking system and implementing it in the Colorado School of Mines Edgar Experimental Mine.