By Codell Rodriguez, The Southern thesouthern.com | Posted: Sunday, September 19, 2010
CARBONDALE - Yoginder Chugh, professor in mining and mineral resources engineering, wants to make the coal mining experience a bit safer and healthier.
Chugh will be one of the presenters at the SIUC Technology and Innovation Expo on Oct. 8 at Dunn-Richmond Economic Development Building. The event includes presenters showing off the latest innovations being developed at SIU as well as speakers and networking sessions.
Chugh said he will present several innovations in coal
mining including lightweight cribs to support the mine
ceiling.
He said he and his team have been working on the cribs for the past two to two and a half years and managed to come up with a lightweight wooden crib design that can support much more than existing cribs.
To do this, he uses a design that includes added wooden pads to help support the beams that form the structure. However, he found that mines in India and China do not use wood, so he began working on a lightweight steel crib that can support more than its wooden counterpart and even weigh less.
The six-foot steel crib structure can hold at least 220 tons of pressure. At least, that's the amount he reached using a pressure machine at the SIUC Coal Research Center in Carterville. He said it can probably hold more but that was as high as he could go without damaging the machine.
"We believe we can carry it to 400 tons," Chugh said.
He said they are also working on a spray system that helps reduce the amount of coal dust inhaled by miners. The system uses an arrangement of different sprays on continuous miners reducing the inhalation by about 30 percent. The system uses an arrangement of spray systems to develop three lines of defense to cut down dust emissions around continuous miner face areas.
Chugh said he is also going to talk about a Rock Dust Scrubber that he said can remove more than 99.5 percent of dust being fed into it.
"I'm hoping it's going to lead to something very good for the industry," Chugh said.
codell.rodriguez@thesouthern.com
618-351-5804
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