Simulation of the Effects of Thermo Insulating Shotcrete on the Energy Consumption of Ventilation and Cooling Systems at Deep Underground

Mines Derek Apel, Wei Liu, and Vivek Bindiganavile University of Alberta Abstract. As the demand for minerals increases over the world, mining reaches new depths. As a result, one has to contend with increasing temperatures in working areas due to geothermal heat trapped in the surrounding rocks. One consequence of this is an escalating cost related to ventilation and cooling systems in order to keep the working environment comfortable for miners. It is here that the application of thermal insulation, which is also mechanically sound, assumes importance. However, until now, the insulation technique has not been widely used in hot mines around the world, due to the difficulty in insulation material selection. The insulation layer on the rock surface of mine openings serves as a thermo-barrier to reduce the heat flow from the rock to the mine atmosphere. This paper uses the results of laboratory tests conducted with various mixtures of thermo insulating shotcretes to find out whether or not insulation of mine airways would be economically viable for hot underground mines. Keywords: deep mine, thermal insulation, shotcrete, ventilation. 1 Introduction Many places around world where the geothermal gradient is high are facing problems with cooing costs at their underground mines. In order to reduce the air temperature at their underground workings most of these mines will use some type of air-conditioning technique or they will try to increase the number of air exchanges. To further limit the cooling and ventilation costs many mines will use

the ventilation on demand technique where only the currently used areas are ventilated. This paper discusses results of numerical simulations on the developed thermal insulating shotcrete which was sprayed on the inside walls of simulated underground tunnels. The results have showed that the thermo insulating shotcrete can achieve excellent heat load reductions which can significantly reduce the cooling and ventilation costs at hot underground mines. 38 D. Apel, W. Liu, and V. Bindiganavile 2 Preparation of the Samples and Laboratory Results The results of previously conducted laboratory experiments at the University of Alberta (Liu, et al. 2011, 2013) reported thermal conductivity reduction of the shotcrete mixtures which contained perlite. Perlite is a volcanic rock, which has high moisture content of 2-5%.. During further processing, this rock is heated above the temperature of 870C (Kramar & Bindiganavile, 2010) which causes the evaporating water to expand rapidly the rock volume. The final product, although made of naturally occurring rock, looks similar to the roughly cut Styrofoam chips (Fig. 1) but unlike the Styrofoam the perlite is non-flammable and will not reliase Expanded perlite has been widely used in thermal and acoustical insulation, fire resistance and reduction of concrete product weight (Ciullo, 1996) but has not been used widely by the mining industry. For the laboratory tests four shotcrete mixtures with perlite were used (Fig. 2) and also shotcrete samples with no perlite were used as the benchmark samples for the tests. Therefore in total five different mixtures were prepared using 0%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% replacement ratios of sand by expanded perlite aggregate (EPA). The results of these tests illustrated that the thermal conductivity of the samples was being decreased with the increase of EPA in the samples. However, the while the thermo insulating properties of the shotcrete were improving with the increase

of EPA in the samples, the Uniaxial Compressive Strength of the samples was being decreased with the increase of EPA in the mixtures (Fig. 3). Two different methods of preparing the samples were used: in first method the shotcrete ingredients were mixed in the concrete mixer and then they were casted into the Fig. 1 Expanded Perlite Aggregate Simulation of the Effects of Thermo Insulating Shotcrete on the Energy Consumption 39 Fig. 2 Shotcrete samples with 25, 50, 75 and 100% EPA Fig. 3 Effect of EPA on the Thermal Conductivity and UCS of the shotcrete samples 40 D. Apel, W. Liu, and V. Bindiganavile plastic cylinders and in the second method 10 cm layer of shotcre was casted on wooden panels using dry shotcrete equipment and then the samples were obtained by diamond coring the 28 day cured shotcrete. Results of tests conducted on samples obtained from both techniques were almost identical. Although, it should be pointed out that the results from casted samples were more consistent than the once obtained from the dry casted shotcrete. This can be attributed to the variation in water pressure which was applied at the nozzle during casting of the shotcrete panels. 3 Numerical Simulation To simulate the effect of the thermoinsulating shotcrete on the cooling costs at deep underground mines a mine model was constructed using the ABAQUS software. All the openings were simulated at deep underground metal mine The tunnel layout of a typical deep underground metal mine in North America was used as the modeling object. It was assumed that the mine had a rock temperature of 80 C degrees as similar conditions exist at some of the proposed mining projects in Arizona (ADMMR). Fig. 4 Temperature Distribution in the modeled simulation

The plan view of the simulated level is located in a 120 m 212 m area, as shown by Figure 4. Also, the airflow distribution has been simulated for this model using examples from mines of similar size. The results of the numerical simulation showed that when a typical tunnel is covered by 10 cm layer of the thermo insulating shotcrete the savings in the mine cooling costs can reach over 50% when the shotcrete contains 100% EPA. However, with the decrease of the EPA content the savings will be also decreased, Simulation of the Effects of Thermo Insulating Shotcrete on the Energy Consumption 41 e.g. the shoctrete mixture with the 50% EPA will decrease the cooling costs by 8.2% and when the 25% EPA shotcrete is used this will only generate a 3.69% savings in the energy costs spent on cooling of the mine air (Table 1). Table 1 Energy reduction due to the use of shotcrete with EPA Perlite (%) Heat Load Reduction Reduction percentage (kW) (kW) (%) 0 3443.28 - 25 3316.06 127.22 3.69% 50 3159.78 283.5 8.23% 75 2958.03 485.26 14.09% 100 1553.26 1890.03 54.89% 4 Conclusions The laboratory tests conducted on shotcrete mixtures where the aggregate was replaced with the EPA showed improvement in the thermal insulating properties of shotcrete. The increase of the EPA in shotcrete mixture results in the decrees of the shotcrete thermal conductivity. According to the results of numerical

simulation covering the mine tunnels with layer of the thermo insulating shotcrete can significantly reduce the mine head load but this saving is going to be only significant if the EPA proportions in the shotcrete are high. On the other hand increasing the EPA content will cause reduction in strength of the shotcrete to a point where the shotcrete wont be able to serve the dual purpose of the insulator and rock support system. It should be also pointed out that that the described simulation was only carried out with scenario where the whole perimeter of the tunnels was covered with shotcrete where at most of the mining operations the tunnel floors will stay open. References Hall, A.E., Mathews, K.E., Gangal, M.K.: Ventilation and Refrigeration requirements and costs in deep Canadian mines, Canada Centre for Mineral and Energy Technology (1984) ADMMR. Resolution Copper Takes Over. Arizona Mineral Resource Newsletter (38) (2004), http://www.admmr.state.az.us/General/Newsletters/ nwsltr2004-06.pdf ASTM, Standard Test Method for Splitting Tensile Strength of Cylindrical Concrete Specimens (ASTM C496/C 496M-04), ASTM International (2004a) 42 D. Apel, W. Liu, and V. Bindiganavile ASTM, Standard Specification for Lightweight Aggregates for Insulating Concrete (ASTM 332), ASTM International (2009a) ASTM, Test Method for Compressive Strength of Cylindrical Concrete Specimens (ASTM C39/C39M-09a), ASTM International (2009b) Ciullo, P.A.: Industrial minerals and their uses: a handbook and formulary, p. 52. William Andrew Publishing (1996)

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