Mine Integration of Robust Gas Monitoring and Communication

This project is closely related to the JCOAL -sponsored parent project known as Mine Communication and Information for Real-time Risk Analysis . The parent project activities include: communications and information, gas monitoring, geotechnical monitoring and personnel safety. For example, some specific communication and information activities include: developing and installing underground coal mine Ethernet LAN components, real-time monitoring of gas and geo-technical sensors.

The objectives of this project are:

• canvass the requirements of central Queensland mines for an integrated safety system and identify the specifications;
• interface to new developments emerging from the parent project (including a robust gas monitoring capability, ventilation monitoring, strata monitoring and enhancements to personnel tracking);
• import gas, geo-technical and personnel monitoring data sourced from new and existing subsystems in order to analyse the levels of risks within the Grasstree Mine , and
• produce generic modules that employ an open access protocol as part of an integrated safety system that can be installed at other mines.

This project has achieved the above-mentioned objectives. The project achievements include:

• a survey of Queensland's longwall mines has been undertaken and the needs for an integrated safety system have been identified;
• a three-layer solution architecture has been designed and a system has been developed which interfaces to newly developed technology;

The Key Deliverable being - a set of generic modules, which combine as the integration layer, have been produced which will allow mines to identify, capture and integrate data from a range of separate system data-bases into a single data-base. These modules are supplied, together with detailed instructions for their use and installation at other mines.

Mine Integration of Robust Gas Monitoring and Communication is a system integration project. The project involves integrating existing and new safety-related systems. For example, underground coal mines employ both tube-bundle and electronic gas monitoring infrastructure. New technology developments include: (a) an intrinsically safe (IS) protocol converter which converts Modbus gas data (from Trolex sensor stations) to Ethernet protocol, and (b) an IS Ethernet switch which forms the basis of an underground local area network. The Mine Integration of Robust Gas Monitoring and Communication project integrates all these systems.

The remainder of this report is organized as follows. The mine requirements are presented in Section 2. That is, the findings of a mine survey are discussed and the system specifications are detailed. Section 3 introduces the three-layer solution architecture, describes the integration layer, and discusses the mine installations.