🔶 Airflow Quantity Requirements for Underground Mines for Design Purposes – still the most experienced based/empirical feature of ventilation planning.

🔶 Some guidelines of first estimates without complete data

🔶 Strata Gas – provide enough airflow to dilute the concentration of the emitted gases to one half of the concentration at which the law requires both in terms of average threshold limit values over one shift and the short-term exposure limits.

🔶 Diesel Equipment
➖ 6 to 8 cubic meters of airflow per 100 kW of all diesel equipment – OR
➖150 cubic feet per minute (CFM) per horse power of all diesel equipment

🔶 Velocity Limits
➖ Working faces – 4 meters per second
➖ Main Haulage – 6 meters per second
➖ Hoisting Shaft – 10 meters per second

🔶 Selection of Multiple Variable Pitch Axial Flow Fans
➖ Select a combination of multiple fans that will meet the pressure-volume requirements with the combined operating point within the higher range of fans’ efficiency

Thanks to SRK Consulting for making this valuable resource publically available.

Source:
https://www.srk.com/en/products/ventilation-textbook
Hooman Askari, LinkedIn

The underground metalliferous mining industry continues to change under the infl uence of many factors including, to name a few, new mining techniques and equipment, new approaches to risk management, more stringent safety and health standards, new employment practices and orebodies become deeper and often lower grade. In addition, the same technological revolution and plummeting cost of technology that has brought the GPS, smart phones and digital cameras to the general population is also working its way through the mining industry impacting on communications, automation and process control as well as introducing major effi ciency and productivity dividends. However, not all factors are positive including, in particular, the issues of carbon costs and electrical power. This paper explores some of the trends affecting ventilation in hard rock mines, some of the existing and likely future challenges and some of the potential future solutions to these issues.

Source: D.J. Brake

Ventsim™ is an underground mine ventilation simulation software package designed to model and simulate ventilation, airflows, pressures, heat, gases, financials, radon, fire, and many other types of ventilation data from a model of tunnels and shafts.

Source: Howden Ventsim, YouTube