Development of a Canopy Air Curtain to Reduce Roof Bolters’ Dust Exposure

Details

• Personal Author:
  Beck, Timothy W. ; Listak, Jeffrey M.
• Description:
  The U.S. 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 of 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 the prototype and final designs were tested in the full-scale mining galleries at the Office of Mine Safety and Health Research (OMSHR) in Pittsburgh, PA 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 Coal Coal Mining Dust Engineering Environmental Monitoring Laboratories Manufacturing And Industrial Facilities Mining Occupational Exposure Occupational Health Particulate Matter Safety

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• Keywords:
  Air-filters Air-flow Air-quality-control Coal-dust Coal-mining Control-technology Dust-control Dust-control-equipment Dust-exposure Dust-inhalation Dust-measurement Dusts Employee-exposure Engineering-controls Environmental-control-equipment Equipment-design Equipment-reliability Filters Fluids Laboratory-testing Machine-operation Mining-equipment Mining-industry Particle-aerodynamics Respirable-dust Testing-equipment Underground-mining

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• Series:
  Mining Publications
• ISSN:
  0026-5187
• Publisher:
  Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration, Inc.
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  OSHA Region 3 ; Pennsylvania
• 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:
  72-79
• Volume:
  64
• Issue:
  7
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20041873
• Citation:
  Min Eng 2012 Jul; 64(7):72-79
• Contact Point Address:
  J.M. Listak, NIOSH, P.O. Box 18070, Pittsburgh, PA 15236
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2012
• NORA Priority Area:
  Mining
• Peer Reviewed:
  True
• Source Full Name:
  Mining Engineering
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:800749365422eb4224874f22747d5d1d0e9b4c27b2fca7611babc3624785e0495f9611ea9a3fd3fc7b03e14d5b038d84eb7fb536d42cb496daa7d61245dd76dc
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/227484/cdc_227484_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 734.42 KB ]