Remote monitoring of Noxious gases and Automated control of Ventilation fans at UCIL’s

Turamdih Underground Mine

An Uranium Corporation of India Limited (UCIL) initiative in collaboration with BARC &M/s Cognitive Technologies

Project Description• The project provides continuous data on noxious fumes

emitted after blasting of mine rock and from other mining emission activities and helps in the management of the mine environment by automatic switching on/off of auxiliary mine fans when noxious fume levels reach a threshold value.

• The installed system offers remote data downloads using Wi-Fi links to any laptop or Android Smart Phone using File Transfer Protocol(FTP)

• The system has helped in electricity savings and is also providing information on the quality of explosives & similar fume emanating materials and is setting time periods for entry of mine personnel to specific zones inside mine after blasting.

Project Details• The Environmental Monitoring System with automated

Ventilation Fan control comprises of affordable yet advanced web-logic based remote monitoring controller units and different gas monitors.

• These units are easy to use, configure and can be managed even by non-technical personnel. One just needs to have knowledge to operate a web browser and have understanding of the overall system logic from onscreen selections made by the users on the web graphical user interface (WEB GUI) of each remote monitoring controller.

• The remote monitoring controller unit logs the data collected at user defined time intervals of every 2mins to a user configured FTP server

System Highlights

• The Web enabled remote monitoring controller unit has a built in web server to show all associated gas data monitored by it in graphical format. The figure alongside depicts a screen shot of the graph displayed for an Analog Input (4-20mA) of gas (in ppm) by the remote monitoring controller unit.

SCHEMATIC DRAWING OF NOXIOUS GAS MONITORING

3:28:29 PM

3:43:30 PM

3:58:31 PM

4:13:32 PM

4:28:34 PM

4:43:36 PM

4:58:36 PM

5:13:38 PM

5:28:39 PM

5:43:41 PM

5:58:42 PM

6:13:43 PM

6:28:45 PM

6:43:46 PM

6:58:48 PM

7:13:49 PM

7:28:51 PM

7:43:53 PM

7:58:54 PM

8:13:56 PM

8:28:56 PM

8:43:58 PM

8:58:59 PM

9:14:00 PM

9:29:02 PM

9:44:04 PM

9:59:04 PM

10:14:06 PM

10:29:07 PM

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Noxious Gas Detection output Graph at Turamdih Mines

CO SensorSO2 Sensor

08.11.2013

ppm

CO CONCENTRATION AGAINST TIME

Conclusions from Graph• It can be seen from the graph that during the blasting time from

3:30 PM to 4:30 PM the Carbon monoxide (CO) concentration increases sharply and thereafter slowly gets diluted. The concentration of CO at different times gives the indication about the quality of an explosive. Thus one can ascertain the quality of explosive at any time including quality deterioration if any.

• The graph also indicates the time duration during which CO concentration was very high thereby giving an idea about the ventilation standard at that working place and the time duration so that no mine personnel may go to that location in that duration.

• From the graph CO in traces can be observed at other hours. This indicates the operation of diesel equipment at that place at that time. Higher concentrations give an idea about the health of the diesel engine as higher CO means incomplete combustion of the fuel indicating that the diesel engine not working efficiently and should be attended to.

Advantages of the System to UCIL• It can be seen & thus concluded

from the above that the system not only brings about savings in energy due to the automatic fan switching off system in areas of lesser concentration of these fumes and vice versa, but also indicates the standard of ventilation, the quality of explosives and diesel, health of diesel engines and the times not to deploy mine personnel in high fume areas.

Scope forFuture Enhancement

• The flexible system design enables it to be extended to support real time environmental monitoring over wired wireless IP network monitored and controlled from the surface.

• The applications indicated alongside can be installed on the above network for future enhancement of the system.

• Wireless Telephony• Support deployment of RFID

tracking.• Time & Attendance of

Personnel• Trip counting• Production data collection• IP video surveillance• Video conferencing• Equipment tracking and

monitoring utilization• Remote Vehicle Diagnostics

Thank You

INVOKING THE SPIRIT OF INNOVATION