Filtered Air Supply System Reduces Roof Bolter Operators’ Exposure to Respirable Dust

Details

• Personal Author:
  Beck, Timothy W. ; Listak, Jeffrey M.
• Description:
  The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) conducted a study to determine the effectiveness of a filtered air delivery system to reduce respirable dust exposure to roof bolter operators in underground coal mines. When performing roof bolting operations, roof bolter operators may experience exposure to high levels of respirable dust during a working shift, especially when working downwind of the continuous mining machine. While drilling and installing roof bolts, this filtered air system supplies a clean curtain of air over the roof bolter operator by means of a plenum mounted beneath the canopy. This experimentally designed air curtain, adapted for roof bolting machines used in this study, is based upon previous design prototypes, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations, and trial-and-error testing. Both prototype and final designs were tested in the full-scale mining galleries at the Office of Mine Safety and Health Research (OMSHR) in Pittsburgh before being taken underground for field testing. Test results of the system in both laboratory and field studies show reductions in operator exposure to respirable dust when the operator is positioned directly under the protected zone of the canopy. Description provided by NIOSH
• Subjects:
  • Air Movements
  • Air Pollutants, Occupational
  • Air Pollution
  • Air Pollution, Indoor
  • Coal
  • Coal Mining
  • Dust
  • Engineering
  • Laboratories
  • Manufacturing and Industrial Facilities
  More +
• Keywords:
  • Mining-industry
  • Mining-equipment
  • Equipment-design
  • Air-flow
  • Air-quality
  • Air-quality-control
  • Underground-mining
  • Respirable-dust
  • Employee-exposure
  • Equipment-operators
  More +
• Series:
  Mining Publications
• ISBN:
  9781622760893
• Publisher:
  Society of Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration, Inc.
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Proceedings
• Place as Subject:
  Colorado ; OSHA Region 10 ; OSHA Region 3 ; OSHA Region 8 ; Pennsylvania ; Washington
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  OMSHR - Office of Mine Safety and Health Research
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  128-133
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20041630
• Citation:
  2012 SME Annual Meeting, February 19-22, Seattle, Washington, preprint 12-025. Englewood, CO: Society of Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration, Inc., 2012 Feb; :128-133
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2012
• NORA Priority Area:
  Mining
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Source Full Name:
  2012 SME Annual Meeting, February 19-22, Seattle, Washington, preprint 12-025
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/227466/cdc_227466_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 1.20 MB]
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:ca224b251145d0a51836d219da632d96b4c8497b41d53e0d37e50b8fca85477716995709b83f07ededb62b0452053a77ad4e7a19261585172d74b4d73630dc70