Six greenhouse gas mitigation projects receive $823,00; 12 coal utilisation projects receive $682,000; 22 open cut projects receive $3.5 million; 25 underground projects receive $3.2 million; and 12 coal prep projects receive $1.7 million.
Including in-kind and other funding the total research funding is $26 million, which means ACARP’s spend is leveraged 2.62 times.
In a December newsletter ACARP outlined the various areas of research direction for 2003.
Greenhouse gas mitigation is a major issue against the backdrop of global community concerns over emissions of greenhouse gases. Two scoping studies will be commissioned to better understand the key parameters determining emissions, from undisturbed coal to point of use, from which a substantial research program will be defined. A further project will develop an instrument to accurately measure the concentration of CH4 in air to very low levels, from ground-based monitoring stations.
Through the CRC for Coal in Sustainable Development (CCSD), ACARP is contributing to work addressing greenhouse gas emissions from the use of coal. This is a key initiative for promoting the place of coal in the transition to sustainable development in a changing world. A major feature is a program of life-cycle analyses of a range of power generation and steel making processes, both coal and non-coal based, to allow impartial comparisons of their strengths and weaknesses.
In the area of health and safety, ACARP has directed funds to reduce the risk of spontaneous combustion and heatings. These include an innovative technique developed in China being examined in a project called Radon Detecting Technique for Locating Underground Heatings. Early indications are that this method has accurately located a heating in a New South Wales mine.
Two further spontaneous combustion projects were supported this round. The University of Queensland will be Optimising the Assessment of Spontaneous Combustion Propensity for Australian Coals and CSIRO will continue to investigate methods of reducing the risk of heatings occurring through a project titled Pro-active Inertisation Strategies and Technology Development. These research projects should provide the additional information needed to gain an early warning in the event of a heating, locate the event and control and limit any damage.
The generation and control of dust is also being addressed. Underground, the joint issues of respirable dust and potentially explosive float dust management are being investigated through Computational Fluid Dynamic Modelling of Air Flow about the Longwall Face.
Two projects are aimed at improving the ability to accurately forecast and manage the impacts of subsidence. One will examine subsidence as it impacts on buildings, Predictions of Mining Induced Movements in Building Structure and the second subsidence as it impacts on rivers, Damage Criteria and Practical Solutions for Protecting Undermined River Channels. In some instances it may be practical to control the extent of subsidence by injecting grout into the separated strata. The project Subsidence Control Using Overburden Grout is modelled on an innovative technique developed in China that is seen to have real potential.
Other projects include Fitness of Longwall Powered Supports, aimed at developing a validated model capable of predicting longwall support capacity and set pressure requirements for Australian mines. Thiss should make it possible to provide an optimal specification for any set of new longwall supports in a given mining environment.
The project Regenerative Technologies to Increase Longwall Advance Speed, seeks to explore the use of regenerative technologies to reduce fluid flow requirements and increase shield advance rates by between 10 and 50%. This would be achieved by a re-design of the shield movement sequence to reuse a large proportion of the high volume-low pressure fluid on the face and minimise the amount returned to the pump station.
Full details of all 2003 projects can be obtained through ACARP or at www.acarp.com.au.
