Protecting and enhancing the lives of miners

By July 27th, 2009

The July/August edition of CSIRO Exploration & Mining’s earthmatters magazine looks at how advances in technologies and attitudes are creating a new generation of healthier miners working in safer environments.

“Employee health and safety is increasingly recognised as a key benefit by enlightened companies,” CSIRO Exploration & Mining Chief Dr Mike McWilliams said.

“This is good news for both workers and their families as well as for mine production levels and profitability.

“Employee health and safety is increasingly recognised as a key benefit by enlightened companies,” CSIRO Exploration & Mining Chief Dr Mike McWilliams said.

“Health and safety performance is driven fundamentally by personal attitudes and organisational leadership.”

“Scientific and engineering solutions such as those featured in this edition of earthmatters play an important supporting role. They are having a positive impact in the industry as the availability of tested and proven products is improved.”

Stories in the health and safety edition include:

  • The other kind of ‘clean coal’: A new dust scrubber that could lead to safer, healthier mining has been created with the help of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modelling to improve our understanding of dust flow patterns around a longwall shearer and walkway under different operating conditions.
  • Diesel designs cut health risk: A CSIRO Exploration & Mining project uses acoustic agglomeration techniques to reduce diesel particulates from coal mine vehicle exhaust by up to 92 per cent.
  • Lifting the miners’ curse: Of all the risks facing underground miners, spontaneous combustion of coal is one of the most feared. CSIRO scientists have been studying improved low-cost composite gels and their injection systems that can be used as barriers to quench heatings.
  • ‘Single system’ enhances safety: New evidence is proving that CSIRO data management technology is delivering major advances to coal mine safety.
  • The latest edition of earthmatters also features: an interview with Greg Rowan, Anglo Coal Australia’s Regional Head of Safety Health and Environment; news on two major CSIRO initiatives towards safer, healthier and greener operations; and a story on a four-year study that employs modern methods to measure changes in the state of ancient rock art.

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