Analytical Instrumentation & Environmental Monitoring


Environmental monitoring in hazardous areas

July 2016 Analytical Instrumentation & Environmental Monitoring

Sperosens is well known in the mining industry for its underground fire detection telemetry systems in SA’s deep gold and platinum mines. Over the past 20 years, the SL2010 system has became popular when it comes to underground environmental monitoring in deep mines.

Since the deep mining environments very seldom need equipment that is rated as explosion safe for hazardous gases, the SL2010 system was never designed for deployment in hazardous coal mining environments where methane gas is a common threat.

EnvironEx changes the game

Sperosens has now announced that all this has changed with the introduction of its new intrinsically safe telemetry system – EnvironEx. As the name indicates, it is fully certified to Ex ia I.

EnvironEx has the same simple architecture as the SL2010 and uses the same rugged communications technology. To deploy EnvironEx in a coalmine a DC power supply must be installed in a safe atmosphere (which can be either a suitable substation, gate-end box or a flameproof box). A single cable run of up to 1000 m can now be routed through the coal mining sections that need monitoring. Both DC power as well as digital communications is fed on this single cable, which can be any standard 4 core armoured type. Green line cable, very popular in the coal mining industry, is extremely suited for this purpose. The cable can also be configured as a number of branches by simple T-connections, providing flameproof junction boxes and glands are used.

EnvironEx utilises up to 10 of the new Sperosens SmartSensors per power supply/cable installation, which are connected to the network cable. SmartSensor measures up to four gases (including CO, CH4, O2, SO2, H2S and others). It also has connection facilities for external smoke and air velocity sensors, both intrinsically safe. Therefore a total of seven channels can be monitored by one device.

In addition, SmartSensor also houses the digital circuits necessary to communicate over the cable network back to the power supply, where a router is located to give connectivity to the mine’s underground Ethernet or fibre networks.

A full EnvironEx system consist of a large number (>500) of individual networks with power supplies and SmartSensors as described above. These individual networks are all tied together by the mine’s underground data backbone. The EnvironEx data measurements are monitored in the surface control room by a scada solution built on Adroit’s EMS technology.

SmartSensor is also available in a standalone version for connection to conventional telemetry systems using a 4-20 mA interface.

For more information contact Johan Lombard, Sperosens, 086 177 3767, johan.lombard@spero.co.za, www.spero.co.za



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