ABSTRACT
The objective of this study is to place sensors that will serve as early-warning indicators of potential or developing problems. The focus of this study is on detecting these situations before they would be readily apparent to those working in the mine. These sensors would serve as sentinels, detecting the potential issue and alerting mine personnel. It is not intended that the sentinels will provide the information to diagnose the cause nor pinpoint the location of the disturbance. Rather, human intervention will be required to locate exactly the source of the disturbance and to diagnose the cause. This study aims to provide an initial look at how continual pressure monitoring can provide real-time ventilation parameters and how differential pressure monitoring can be used in an accident scenario. This study presented was to formulate a strategy for placing sensors throughout the mine to help decisionmakers identify ventilation conditions that could potentially lead to ventilate failure incident or even for a mine disaster. Field tests about atmospheric monitoring system have been conducted. A developed monitoring strategy and data analyzing method was proposed to effectively identify the ventilation interruptions by using limited amounts of sensors. It is found that differential pressure between various locations can be used as an index to capture ventilation interruptions and also to determine the location of the interruptions.
