REX - Regional Express

techtalk It then discharged 120 litres of water within 250 milliseconds to suppress the incipient explosion before it really began. Business Development Manager for BMT WBM's Machinery group heralded the success of this prototype as groundbreaking. BMT WBM played a pivotal role in replicating and understanding the physical and chemical components of coal dust particles, and in accurately calculating the injection and vaporisation of the suppressant as determined by their computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modelling, while SkillPro designed the final prototype and managed the test program. Their development of the Active Barrier project received ongoing financial support from the Australian Coal Association Research Program (ACARP), which has addressed many OH&S, environmental and social issues in relation to mining since its inception in 1992. ACARP's Underground Research and Development committee granted an excellence award to the joint BMT WBM and SkillPro team for their work on the project. While this new product is in development, however, traditional methods of managing coal-dust explosion risks are all that's available. 44 In the Lower Hunter region, which stretches along the central coast of New South Wales, coal dust is something of a contentious issue in environmental, political and social circles. Though divisions of opinion largely surround issues of air quality and particulate control, the expansion of mining in this region has increased the production of coal dust, which has not only impacted air quality but has increased the risk of spontaneous combustion. While at this stage only reactive countermeasures are available to mitigate the risk of coal-dust explosions, people's lives continue to be at risk. Thus, when the Newcastle Coal Infrastructure Group (NCIG) expanded its Kooragang Island Terminal, it was forced to outsource its protection system to Wormald which, in light of the Active Barrier project, recently installed traditional and comparatively passive explosion barriers to protect its miners. As SkillPro's manager of the Active Barrier project David Humphreys acknowledges, a zero-harm approach is the ultimate goal. Until this approach is finalised, though, coal-dust explosions will continue to cause casualties worldwide. "While at this stage only reactive countermeasures are available to mitigate the risk of coal-dust explosions, people's lives continue to be at risk."

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