• Renewable mine heating and cooling:

    • Spray freezing for air heating and cooling,

    • Rock thermal energy storage for mine heating and cooling,

    • Geothermal energy for mine heating and cooling,

    • Lake cooling for UG mines,

    • Mine waste heat recovery and storage.

  • Airflow through broken/fragmented/caved/fractured rocks

  • Ventilation and air leakage in duct, stope, goaf etc

  • Methane, dust, particulate and diesel emission control

  • Fire and combustion simulation

  • CFD modeling of mine ventilation

  • Decarbonization in mine energy systems

stes

Mining is the most important technique with which we can extract materials from earth. Presently, most mining occurs in open-pits, but with increasing demands on raw materials due to rapid growth in global population and industrialization, underground mining comes to play a critical role in supplying raw materials. It is well known, however, that underground mining is one of the most dangerous working environment; thus it requires careful design and planing of the mining infrastructure to ensure safe, productive and relatively comfortable environment. One of the key processes for this purpose in underground mines is ventilation and total air-conditioning, which comprises three distinct parts: quality control, quantity control and temperature humidity control.


underground

To facilitate proper design of a mine ventilation and total air-conditioning system, it is necessary to develop in-depth knowledge of the flow direction to be used, pressure drop as a results of various obstacles, possibility of presence of any kind of fire and explosion, presence of harmful gases (such as methane in coal mines, radon and diesel emissions) and temperature-humidity profile at various location underneath (depending on the geographical location). Our works focus on fundamental and applied aspects of mine ventilation and total air-conditioning system as well as introducing innovative ideas for cutting edge research to ensure safe, health and productive mine operation whilst keeping effective and efficient energy consumptions and environmentally friendly mine operations. Our group have so far introduced several ways to improve methane controls in underground coal mines, improved design on dust control, diesel emission control and thermal management (heating and cooling) in underground mines.

Relevant publications

  1. L. Amiri, A. Madiseh, F. Hassani, A.P. Sasmito*, Friction factor correlation for airflow through broken rocks and its applications in mine ventilation,  International Journal of Mining Science and Technology 30 (2020) 455-462, doi:10.1016/j.ijmst.2020.05.003
  2. H. Kalantari, A. Madiseh*, A.P. Sasmito, Hybrid renewable hydrogen energy solution for application in remote mines, Energies 13 (2020) 6365, doi: 10.3390/en13236365
  3. L. Amiri, M. de Brito, A. Madiseh*, N. Bahrani, F. Hassani, A.P. Sasmito*, Numerical evaluation of the transient performance of rock-pile seasonal thermal energy storage systems coupled with exhaust heat recovery, Applied Sciences 10 (2020) 7771, doi:10.3390/app10217771
  4. L. Amiri, A. Madiseh, F. Hassani, A.P. Sasmito*, Estimating pressure drop and Ergun/Forchheimer parameters of flow through packed bed of spheres with large particle diameters,  Powder Technology 356 (2019) 310-324, doi:10.1016/j.powtec.2019.08.029
  5.  L. Amiri, M. Brito, D. Baidya, A. Kuyuk, A. Madiseh*, A.P. Sasmito, F. Hassani, Numerical investigation of rock-pile based waste heat storage for remote comunities in cold climate, Applied Energy  252 (2019) 113475, doi:10.1016/j.apenergy.2019.113475
  6. A. Madiseh*, H. Kalantari, A. Kuyuk, A.P. Sasmito, A new model to analyze performance of mine exhaust heat recovery systems with coupled heat exchangers, Applied Energy  256 (2019) 113922, doi: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2019.113922
  7. A. Kuyuk, A. Madiseh*, A.P. Sasmito*, F. Hassani, Designing a large-scale lake cooling system for an ultra-deep mine: A Canadian case study, 12 Energies (2019) 811, doi: 10.3390/en12050811
  8. J.C. Kurnia, B.A. Chaedir, D.C. Lim, L. Chen, L. Jiang, A.P. Sasmito*, Numerical evaluation of potential catalyst savings for ventilation air methane catalytic combustion in helical coil reactors with selective wall coating, Catalysts 9 (2019) 380, doi:10.3390/catal9040380
  9. J.C. Kurnia, A. Madiseh, A.P. Sasmito*, Heat transfer and entropy generation in concentric/eccentric double-pipe helical heat exchangers, Heat Transfer Engineering (2019) in press, doi:10.1080/01457632.2019.1661666
  10. D. Baidya, M. Brito, A.P. Sasmito, M. Scoble, A. Madiseh, Recovering waste heat from diesel generator exhaust; an opportunity for combined heat and power generation in remote Canadian mines,  Journal of Cleaner Production 225 (2019) 785-805, doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.03.340
  11. M. Fong, M. Alzoubi, J.C. Kurnia, A.P. Sasmito*, On the performance of ground coupled seasonal thermal energy storage for heating and cooling: A Canadian context, Applied Energy 250 (2019) 593-604, doi:10.1016/j.apenergy.2019.05.002
  12. L. Amiri, A. Madiseh, A.P. Sasmito*, F. Hassani, Effect of buoyancy-driven natural convection in a rock-pit mine air preconditioning system acting as a large-scale thermal energy storage mass Applied Energy 221 (2018) 268-279, doi:10.1016/j.apenergy.2018.03.088
  13. B. Bharathan, A.P. Sasmito*, S.A. Ghoreishi-Madiseh, Analysis of energy consumption and carbon footprint from underground haulage with different power sources in typical Canadian mines, Journal of Cleaner Production 166 (2017) 21-31, doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.07.233
  14. S.A. Ghoreishi-Madiseh, A.P. Sasmito*, F. Hassani, L. Amiri, Performance Evaluation of Large Scale Rock-Pit Seasonal Thermal Energy Storage for Application in Underground Mine Ventilation,  Applied Energy 185 (2017) 1940–1947, doi:10.1016/j.apenergy.2016.01.062
  15. J.C. Kurnia, A.P. Sasmito*, A.S. Mujumdar, Prediction and innovative control strategies for oxygen and hazardous gases from diesel emission in Underground Mines, Science of the Total Environment, 2014;481:317-334.
  16. J.C. Kurnia, A.P. Sasmito*, A.S. Mujumdar, Simulation of A Novel Intermittent Ventilation System for Underground Mines, Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology, 2014;42:206-215.
  17. J.C. Kurnia, A.P. Sasmito*, A.S. Mujumdar, CFD Simulation of Methane Dispersion and Innovative Methane Management in Underground Mining Faces, Applied Mathematical Modeling, 2014;38:3467-3484.
  18. J.C. Kurnia, A.P. Sasmito*, A.S. Mujumdar, Dust Dispersion and Management in Underground Mining Faces,International Journal of Mining Science and Technology 2014;24:39-44.
  19. A.P. Sasmito*, E. Birgersson, H. Ly, A.S. Mujumdar, Some Approaches to Improve Ventilation System in Underground Coal Mines Environment – A Computational Fluid Dynamic Study, Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology 2013;34:82-95.
  20. A.P. Sasmito, J.C. Kurnia, M. Guan, E. Birgersson, A.S. Mujumdar, Computational Fluid Dynamics Analysis of Total Air-Conditioning in Underground Mines, book chapter in: Engineering Application of Computational Fluid Dynamics – Volume 2, edited by M.A.R.S. Al-Baghdadi, International Energy and Environment Foundation, 2012, ISBN: 978-147-832-935-0.