ABSTRACT
Continuous monitoring of respirable silica dust levels in mining environments is crucial to ensure the safety of mine workers. However, runtime monitoring of elevated silica dust levels is not an easy task. This study introduces the next generation runtime silica dust monitor of elevated silica and coal dust levels in the mining environment. For this development, RingIR will utilize our patented cavity ringdown optical spectroscopy-based technology combined with miniaturized FPGA digital signal processing. The proposed system will continuously pull air from the environment and determine the concentration of silica dust levels via data processing from an on-board computer. These dust levels will be displayed instantly and can send audio and visual alerts if the detected level is higher than the set exposure limit.
