Abstract:
After hundreds of years of mining, the more accessible shallow mineral resources are being
depleted, and some have now been exhausted. This leaves us underground mining as the only
economical way of getting hold of the earth’s deeper mineral deposits. However, this method
exposes an average mine worker to a harsh underground environment such as excessive ambient
temperature in the workspace, dust, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen
sulfide, and nitrogen oxides which are majorly liberated from blasting, mine fires, timber decay,
drilling, incomplete combustion, and diesel engines, among others.
This research focused on addressing the major gaps that have been existing in maintaining good
underground miners’ working conditions. This happens through keeping track of the mine
pollutant levels (temperature, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and dust) and controlling their
concentrations by varying the mine air flowrate. The system further automatically produces
warning signals (both visual and sound) for the worst scenarios.
The system achieves its functionality through the use of a wireless sensor network (WSN)
comprised of various sensor nodes around the mine workings that extract data from the mine and transmit it to the sink node that saves this information to the main database plus controlling ventilation fans.
