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Mine Rescue & Safety

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MINE FIRES
OCCURRENCE:
Mine fire is much more common than the people realize. Most fires in underground mine are small and quickly putout (extinguish). Disasters caused by mine fires are less frequent but it can also be a major disaster if not quickly brought under control.

FIRE KNOWLEDGE
Everyone who works underground in a mine should have a basic knowledge of mine fire and how fires are controlled? Knowledge about this hazard will encourage every underground worker to do his art to prevent fires. Workers must be trained to take the appropriate action if they discover a fire because their safety cant be left at risk.

CONSIDERATION UPON LOCATING FIRES


A worker discovering a fire must consider several possible actions very quickly. Any action taken or not taken will have a big effect on the fire and the safety of everyone in the mine. If any fire is discovered, the following points should be kept in mind. Attempt to put it out? How do you attack the fire? How long should you try? How to sound an alarm? Attempt to get-out of the mine? By what route? How to notify the other workers? How should you shut-off burning electrical motors? How should you shut off fans? How to close or open ventilation doors?

It is much better to make informed about the decisions on the basis of understanding the situation than to leave the workers and the mine at the risk. Knowing how to prevent fires is even better. Each mine must develop specific emergency procedure for its safety. All employees must be well trained in their emergency procedure and understand how to apply them. The proper response to alarm should be practiced at least once in a year. All fire equipment must always be kept in proper working conditions.

THE BURNING PROCESS AND ELEMENTS OF FIRE


A rapid chemical process (as oxidation) that produces heat and usually light is known as combustion. There are three necessary factors for a fire.
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Mine Rescue & Safety

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1. Combustible material 2. The presence of oxygen (or an oxidizing agent) 3. Enough heat to increase the temperature of the combustible material to its ignition temperature FIRE BURNS IN TWO WAYS; Smoldering (surface) and Flaming combustion a) The smoldering mode is a fire that burns with thick smoke but no flame. This mode is represented by the fire triangle (fuel, heat and oxygen). b) The flaming mode of combustion, such as the burning of logs (wood/fuel) in the fire place, is represented by the fire tetrahedron (fuel, temperature, oxygen and the in habited chemical chain reaction)

THE FIRE TRIANGLE


The fire triangle or combustion triangle is a simple model for understanding the necessary ingredients for most fires. The three factors (fuel, oxygen and heat) have been incorporate into the simple fire triangle model. The triangle illustrates the three elements a fire needs to ignite: heat, fuel, and an oxidizing agent (usually oxygen). The fire will be prevented or extinguished by removing any one of the elements in the fire triangle.

Causes of fire
Most fires occurring underground are caused by the following
1. 2. 3. 4. Electricity. Human intervention / Manmade (deliberate or accidental) Spontaneous Friction.

1. Electricity Some mine fires are caused by the misuse of electricity on battery, locomotives, power cables, trolley wires, motors, electric heaters and even light bulbs. These are common sources of fires in mobile equipment. Overloaded electrical circuit can cause electrical cables to overheat. Circuit breakers or fuses provide protection against overloaded electrical circuits but if someone tempers with fuses or circuit breakers then this protection is lost and overheating can take place. Electrical circuit protection devices are fire prevention devices and tempering with one can cause electrical cables or motors to burst into flames. Other common causes of mine fires are the over fusing and faulty battery cables.

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Mine Rescue & Safety

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2. Human Interventions / Man-made (deliberate or accidental) Welding and burning, and smoking and blasting, are among the main causes of fires. Control and patrol (tour) procedures must be observed whenever welding is done in anyplace where the welder may bring the three sides of the fire triangles together. A worker in a lunch room may throw a hot match or cigarette into the garbage (waste), a welder cutting steel in a shaft can provide a source of heat (hot metal or slag) that causes a fuel to ignite. Active burning can be delayed for long periods of time by a slow flaming or oxidation of wood started by the hot slag. An active fire can breakout many hours after the hot work is finished. Accidental leakage of petroleum production on hot machinery is another common cause of fires. For example: the leakage of hydraulic fluid and diesel on to hot engines exhaust manifolds causes a number of underground fires every year. 3. Spontaneous combustion Spontaneous combustion occurs when ventilation is not sufficient to carry away the heat of oxidation. Slow oxidation of oily rags (mineral), old timber (wood) etc. can generate enough heat to cause combustion without any outside source of heat. As oxidation starts, heat is produced which causes the oxidation to speedup which creates more heat. This chain reaction eventually causes the material being oxidized to burst into flame. 4. Friction Friction causes overheating of brake-bands, clutches on slushs transmission gear boxes and v-belt drives. Two of the most common friction causes, fire is the result of the forgetting to release vehicle parking brakes, clutch & Conveyor belts slippage, overheated bearing or rubbing against flammable item.

TYPES OF MINE FIRE


1. Open fires Open fire are those occurring in the roadways or at the working face in a mine. Such fires may or may not easily be distinguished, they may not be in the roof of roadways or in the part of a machine, cut face and are distinct in the initiation from gob fires. 2. Gob fires Gob fires are initiated spontaneously by the oxidation process of the combustible material, usually broken coal or in some instances pyrite. The chemical indication of gob fire is the presence of carbon monoxide CO in higher percentage than in the air samples which contains the gas affluent (rich) from the gob fire area. Air samples taken in the return from coal seam may contain a small quantity of carbon monoxide, even though no fire exists and it is an obvious precautions in the mines suspected to be liable to spontaneous combustion. Regular air samples taken and the

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Mine Rescue & Safety

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increase in the normal percentage of carbon monoxide may be determined at any stage in the development of a gob fire. The gob fire is being extinguished by making an opening out of the heated gob area. The hot excavated material should be wetted or mixed with sand or stone dust to cool it as it loaded into tube for sending out of the pit. The application of the water on the large quantity with the digging-out method of attacking gob fire is disliked by man experienced engineers. Unless the area is so placed that it can be completely flooded to avoid a possible outbreak of open fire. It is essential precaution to watch every move of gob fire. The applications of water to gob fires are result of the initiation and location of such fires. Their initiation is by limited passage of air at low velocity, sufficient for the slow oxidation of the certain materials in the gob. This implies a fairly compact mass of broken coal at unconsolidated goaf. A more usual method of controlling gob fire is to deny to the heating at earliest as possible moment. Sand and stone dusts are the most useful materials readily available for the sealing of the area where heating instances are recorded. Simple expedient of pilling-up sand around the affected gob has been sufficient to prevent access of air. The other method is to build brick or stone walls some little away from the pack-wall and to pack the intervening spaces with well rammed sand. Hydraulic sand stowing to seal of spontaneous heating (combustion) is cheap but effective in stinking smoking in addition to its application in damming off (block) open fires. With any method of sealing off affected area, care should be taken to ensure that all roof breaks or roof separation which could possible provide channel for the passage of air are also sealed. This may be bent accomplished by cement grouting the whole surface of the packs and the strata surrounding the heating.

FIRE FIGHTING METHODS


1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. loading out the fires cooling by water infusion of water slurry using extinguishers liquid extinguisher foam type extinguisher high expansion plug extinguisher

8. infusion of inert gases 9. sealing off the fires

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Mine Rescue & Safety

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INFUSION OF INERT GASES This method is gaining importance in extinguishing (turn-off) larger scale underground fires. The gases used are CO2, O2 or mixture of CO2 and N2. a) CARBON DIOXIDE CO2 is usually produced from the burning of coke or oil (lime kiln, cement industry and breweries) as a byproduct. It is available as solid in blocks. b) NITROGEN It is manufactured from liquefaction of air as a byproduct of oxygen. It is stored in gaseous form in high pressure cylinders, in liquid form in double walled container with vents for gas to escape. c) CARBON DIOXIDE AND NITEROGEN MIXTURE It is produced as by product as flue from power plants, boilers and furnaces etc. The problem with flue is its oxygen percentage (4.6%) which is to be brought down to 2% and CO2 below 100ppm. Other flue generator is aircraft jet engine which burns kerosene to product low oxygen flue. The flue produced first cooled down and then successfully used in firefighting in mines. Vertical flue generators designed specially, economically for fighting underground fires. Such generators may produced 3000m3 of flue by burning 2 tons of coal Working principle The inert gas works by cutting-off oxygen free and taking heat as well. In sealing-off an affected area, there are some leakages from where the air continues and fire keeps on consuming a portion of oxygen in the dead space of the scale zone, thus causing concentration resulting in suction from leakages. The continuous infusion of inert gases causes air movement to stop reaching the fire. CO2 is better in quick replenishment of air. Due to its heaviness from air, it fills up from floor, but can escape quickly through cracks and fissures. Once filled up, it cant be flushed easily because of dilution with air. It has advantages besides being consumed, that it react thermally taking 40.8kcal/mole, when on coming in contact with a flowing mass of coal. N2 is lighter gas as compared with area goaf gas, containing applicable quantity of CO2. Flue gas (mixture of CO2 and N2 has the advantage of being the identical density of goaf gas. It can cover up the entire sealed zone in quicker time other than oxygen replacement qualities of inert gas infusion. it will facilitate cooling by stirring up to goaf gas. Applications: The inert gas infusion technique may be employed in following four situations i) ii) iii) iv) Fire prevention During sealing off operations Liquidating a sealed fire Halting the progress of fire.
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Mine Rescue & Safety

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Spontaneous combustion of coal


Spontaneous combustion is one of the hazards of great importance associated with coal mining, spontaneous combustion of coal is generally defined as the heating and the burning of coal and carbon, ferrous material is initiated by absorption of oxygen. In underground working coal mines, whether open or closed fires are present. A series of explosions occurs due to the following reasons. The fire damp normally emitted in the mine along other flammable gases and with improper ventilation, this may lead to the formation of flammable atmosphere in the vicinity of the origin of the fire there constitute a source of ignition. The temperature will rise at the rate of heat dissipation loss. The rise in temperature will result in the rate of oxidation to increase which will produce more heat and accelerate the self heating (spontaneous combustion) process. Factors affecting spontaneous combustion (self heating process) is governed by two groups of factors; (1) Intrinsic: It has natural property factors comprised of chemical and physical nature of coal which defines the oxygen absorption capacity and oxidability of coal. (2) External: External factors are brought by mining activity. The spontaneous combustion liability is largely dependent upon the inherent ( )characteristic of coal together with the external factors. The optimum leakage of air for self heating is rather how in all cases. self heating hazard will be greater for those ventilation condition that ensures sufficient supply of air to the reacting mass of coal without excessive removal of the heat generated. therefore , (1) the excess of air (2) Climate of areal region (3) Initial temperature of coal (4) Wetness of stock pile (5) Compactness of stock pile (6) Open or covered storage capacity (7) Type of ventilation around stockpile such as free ventilation (8) Type and quality of coal being stored (9) Length of time since coal was mined and stored (10) Monitoring of coal temperature and gas analysis (11) Bulk density during storage and transportation (12) Quality of loading and unloading

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Coal Chemistry
Coal can be ignited and burned like wood, the earliest form of fuel, but in comparison coal gives more heat than the same amount of wood .it has many industrial uses, power generation cement industry etc. The temperature of coal will rise at the rate of heat dissipation loss, the rise in temperature will result in the rate of oxidation to increase which will produce more heat and to accelerate the self heating (spontaneous combustion) process.

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