MODELLING AND OPTIMIZATION OF A VENTILATION NETWORK IN UNDERGROUND MINES

One of the challenges in underground mining is to assure the good environment, in terms of quality and quantity of the air flow, to remove the gases generated underground and to provide fresh air in the whole of the mine. Also, the ventilation network is a complex network, which should be modelled to control the ventilation parameters to be adapted to any circumstance. The main sources of gases are diesel equipment and blast fumes which emit important amounts of pollutants and toxic gases. This paper describes the methodology to understand the mine ventilation process and how to model this network to adapt the ventilation equipment, mainly based on fans performance, to get the optimized parameters in order to minimize the technical and economical outcomes of the project. This methodology has been adapted to analyze mine ventilation requirements in the case of the development of new mining levels.