The 4th International Symposium on Mine Safety Science and Engineering (ISMSSE2018)

391 / 2018-09-19 09:21:59

Freezing on Demand: A New Concept for Mine Safety and Energy Savings in Wet Underground Mines

artificial ground freezing; wet underground; freezing on demand

Mine Dynamics Disaster > Water inrush

Traditional Artificial Ground Freezing (AGF) systems are designed to seal-off ground water seepage into the work area and to strengthen the rock mass structure thus providing a safe work environment. As this continuous procedure requires significant amount of energy, a new technique has been developed at McGill Mine Multiphysics laboratory, which minimizes the energy consumption while ensuring the personnel safety by maintaining nearby walls frozen. This new concept, called Freezing on Demand (FoD), is presented and discussed analytically and experimentally in this paper. A laboratory scale AGF rig was built to experimentally analyze the behavior of the thermal ground interaction. Furthermore, a three-dimensional conjugate heat transfer mathematical model was developed and validated to simulate the transient FoD concept. The effect of the inlet coolant temperature was analyzed. The results reveal that considerable energy savings can be achieved through the FoD method. Moreover, energy savings increase while decreasing the coolant inlet temperature in the FoD method.