Dust Control In Hard Rock Mines

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Dust Control In Hard Rock Mines

• What You Cant See Can Kill You.

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Dust Control In This Mine Is A Large Complex
Problem

• Many items discussed in this presentation
  requires problem solving at all levels of an
  operation.
• It may require engineering, operations, or
  maintenance groups to assist to ultimately solve.
• It requires a total team effort from all
  underground personnel other site-wide groups.

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Dust Control In Any Mine Is A Large Complex
Problem

• Dust can cause health related issues whether it
  is a short acute related health problem or a long
  term systemic problem like silicosis.
• Prevention of dust is everyones problem. We all
  breath the same air, if we dont take care of it.
  In other words It can kill you.

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Why Can Dust Get So Bad Here?

• Fact Major dust compliance problems in hard
  rock mines is caused by silica (quartz) in the
  rock. Mines high in silica content rock, 8 or
  more, are far more likely to have dust problems
  than those where there is less silica.
• Fact On average the rock in this mine is 40
  silica content. Depending where you mine it can
  go higher.
• Fact Exposure to silica dust can cause silicosis.

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Major Source of Dust Generation

• Blasting
• Mucking Haulage
• Drilling Bolting
• Ore passes
• Crushers
• Conveyors Systems
• Backfill Process
• Road Headers
• Shotcreting
• Fresh Intake Mine Dust

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Control Measures for Correction Reduction in
Dust

• Water sprays Spray Bars
• Ventilation
• Control of drill dust
• Control of conveyor dust
• Control of ore pass dust
• Control of mucking haulage dust
• Control of blasting dust
• Control of road-header dust
• Control of fresh air intake dust

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Control Measures
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Drill Dust Control

• Factors that can lead to high dust levels on
  drills
• Lack of Proper Maintenance
• Failure to use water
• Inadequate quantities of water
• Plugged water holes in drill steels
• Dull drill bits
• Dry collaring.
• Poor Maintenance on dust collector systems

• Good Dust Control
• Requires Good Regular Consistent Maintenance

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Crushers Rock Breakers

• Water Sprays Systems
• Dust Collector Systems
• Ventilation Systems
• All require regular maintenance attention.
• Disabling dust control systems are a bad practice
  that can cause long term health threats.

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Conveyor Belt Dust Control
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Possible Solutions to Conveyor System Dust
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Solutions to Conveyor Transfer Box Dust May
Require Installing Properly Maintaining Dust
Collector Systems Moving Rock Moves Air.
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Maintenance of Water Spray Sprinkler Systems
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Solving Ore Pass Dust

• A critical step in dust control is to prevent
  its escape dispersal.
• Confinement can be accomplished by systems of
  stoppings air tight doors, curtains, spray
  bars, or isolations of passes away from
  travelways.
• Dust can be reduce by wetting before delivery
  adding water at the tipping site by spraying rock
  as it falls into passes.

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Mucking Haulage Dust Control

• Large Strides can be made to improve dust during
  this cycle.
• Improvement to water trucks sprinklers.
• Installation of mine wide sprinkler systems.
• Dust surfactants testing implementations.
• Wetting down entire muck area prior to removal of
  material.

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Blasting Dust Control

• Thoroughly wetting down area surrounding the
  blast (Back, Ribs Seal) before a blast will
  help settle dust from previous operations from
  becoming airborne.

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Blasting Dust Control

• Uniform rock moisture content of only 1 greatly
  reduces dust compared to dry rock both before
  after a blast.

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Shotcreting Dust Control

• Note Predampening washing down of rock
  surfaces in shotcreting zone will greatly improve
  adhesion of product eliminates a lot of dust
  that can be liberated during pneumatic
  application of product.
• When dry systems are utilized predampening of
  product can reduce dust.
• Also spray bars in close proximity can knock down
  goodly amounts of generated dust.

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Road Header Dust Control

• Dust Control for machines like roadheaders
  usually depend on some degree of dust cloud
  confinement.

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Road Header Dust Control Managed Through
Ventilation Water Sprays
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Fresh Air Intake Dust

• Dust is liberated from other sources (i.e.
  process facilities, haul roads, backfill
  stockpiles.
• Possible solutions
• Surface application of dust surfactants around
  fresh air intakes.
• Increased water trucks scheduling.
• Better dust control at surface crusher facilities.

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Respiratory Protection

• Ultimately it is the objective of the safety
  department to do away with mandatory respiratory
  protection for all underground personnel. This
  will only be possible by diligent efforts of all
  personnel underground.
• There are definitely in roads that need to be
  made. Some of it is behavioral. Some of it is
  improvement in conditions that create dust
  releases. It will require everyones help
  active participations to solve.

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Lets Talk About Near Misses Accidents

• We all know that accidents near misses are when
  conditions behaviors run close enough together
  to cause an incident the only way to control them
  is to separate conditions away from behaviors.
  The farther apart these are the greater margin of
  safety.
• You say, What does that have to do with dust
  control?

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Conditions Can Drive Behaviors Behaviors Can
Drive Conditions

• What conditions can drive behaviors?
• How do we correct them?
• What behaviors can drive conditions?
• How do we correct them?
• The Key to solving this problem is what?

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You

• You may not be able to control how your fellow
  worker will react.
• The Key is being able to control how you react.
• Proactive Safety can help solves problems.
• Collectively if we all choose to do the most
  productive correct solution to this problem,
• It wont belong to until we all have eaten this
  elephant.
• It starts with the first bite.

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In Summary

• Dust is by product of the mining process.
• It take daily commitment from all personnel
  underground to solve this problem every shift.
• Remember controlling dust every day can keep the
  respirator 02 bottle away.
• Please do your part every day.

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Created by Pat GazewoodA.k.a. Capt. Shotcrete

• Thanks to Niosh for source information used in
  this presentations.