Remote monitoring of noxious gases and automated control
1. Remote monitoring of Noxious gases and
Automated control of Ventilation fans at UCIL’s
Turamdih Underground Mine
An Uranium Corporation of India Limited (UCIL) initiative
in collaboration with BARC &
M/s Cognitive Technologies
2. Project Description
• The project provides continuous data on noxious fumes
emitted after blasting of mine rock and from other
mining emission activities and helps in the management
of the mine environment by automatic switching on/off
of auxiliary mine fans when noxious fume levels reach a
threshold value.
• The installed system offers remote data downloads using
Wi-Fi links to any laptop or Android Smart Phone using
File Transfer Protocol(FTP)
• The system has helped in electricity savings and is also
providing information on the quality of explosives &
similar fume emanating materials and is setting time
periods for entry of mine personnel to specific zones
inside mine after blasting.
3. Project Details
• The Environmental Monitoring System with automated
Ventilation Fan control comprises of affordable yet
advanced web-logic based remote monitoring controller
units and different gas monitors.
• These units are easy to use, configure and can be
managed even by non-technical personnel. One just needs
to have knowledge to operate a web browser and have
understanding of the overall system logic from onscreen
selections made by the users on the web graphical user
interface (WEB GUI) of each remote monitoring controller.
• The remote monitoring controller unit logs the data
collected at user defined time intervals of every 2mins to a
user configured FTP server
4. System Highlights
• The Web enabled remote
monitoring controller unit
has a built in web server to
show all associated gas
data monitored by it in
graphical format. The
figure alongside depicts a
screen shot of the graph
displayed for an Analog
Input (4-20mA) of gas (in
ppm) by the remote
monitoring controller unit.
7. Conclusions from Graph
• It can be seen from the graph that during the blasting time
from 3:30 PM to 4:30 PM the Carbon monoxide (CO)
concentration increases sharply and thereafter slowly gets
diluted. The concentration of CO at different times gives the
indication about the quality of an explosive. Thus one can
ascertain the quality of explosive at any time including
quality deterioration if any.
• The graph also indicates the time duration during which CO
concentration was very high thereby giving an idea about the
ventilation standard at that working place and the time
duration so that no mine personnel may go to that location in
that duration.
• From the graph CO in traces can be observed at other hours.
This indicates the operation of diesel equipment at that place
at that time. Higher concentrations give an idea about the
health of the diesel engine as higher CO means incomplete
combustion of the fuel indicating that the diesel engine not
working efficiently and should be attended to.
8. Advantages of the System to UCIL
• It can be seen & thus
concluded from the above
that the system not only
brings about savings in energy
due to the automatic fan
switching off system in areas
of lesser concentration of
these fumes and vice versa,
but also indicates the
standard of ventilation, the
quality of explosives and
diesel, health of diesel
engines and the times not to
deploy mine personnel in
high fume areas.
9. Scope for
Future Enhancement
• The flexible system design
enables it to be extended to
support real time
environmental monitoring
over wired wireless IP
network monitored and
controlled from the surface.
• The applications indicated
alongside can be installed on
the above network for future
enhancement of the system.
• Wireless Telephony
• Support deployment of RFID
tracking.
• Time & Attendance of
Personnel
• Trip counting
• Production data collection
• IP video surveillance
• Video conferencing
• Equipment tracking and
monitoring utilization
• Remote Vehicle Diagnostics