Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) applications in underground coal mines

Abstract

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), a concept that combines sensor networks and control systems, has been employed in several industries to improve productivity and safety. U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) researchers are investigating IIoT applications to identify the challenges of and potential solutions for transferring IIoT from other industries to the mining industry. Specifically, NIOSH has reviewed existing sensors and communications network systems used in U.S. underground coal mines to determine whether they are capable of supporting IIoT systems. The results show that about 40 percent of the installed post-accident communication systems as of 2014 require minimal or no modification to support IIoT applications. NIOSH researchers also developed an IIoT monitoring and control prototype system using low-cost microcontroller Wi-Fi boards to detect a door opening on a refuge alternative, activate fans located inside the Pittsburgh Experimental Mine and actuate an alarm beacon on the surface. The results of this feasibility study can be used to explore IIoT applications in underground coal mines based on existing communication and tracking infrastructure.

A Comprehensive Review on Internet of Things (IoT) and its Implications in the Mining Industry

“…Several studies introduced and discussed a specific modern technique using recent technologies such as AI and its challenges at a particular stage of mining (Ghasemi et al, 2014;Muduli et al, 2018;Ghaychi Afrouz and Westman, 2018;Chakravorty, 2019;Hyder et al, 2019;McGaughey, 2020). Few studies also specifically introduced IoT for a single task in mining such tailing dam monitoring (Sun et al, 2012), coal mine monitoring system (Hu et al, 2013;Bo et al, 2014;Zhou et al, 2017), positioning systems in coal mines (Liu et al, 2010;Liu and Liu, 2014), ventilation and gas monitoring (Qin et al, 2011;Qian et al, 2016;Gillies et al, 2004;Jo and Khan, 2018), roof support (Singh et al, 2018), maintenance and machinery safety (Atkins et al, 2010;Zhang et al, 2014;McNinch et al, 2019). Hyder et al (2019) investigated the application of modern techniques in automation of mining industry; nevertheless, the challenges of applications of IoT are not evaluated in the literature.…”

“…In an industry such as mining in which efficiency and productivity improvements are essential to profitability, even small enhancement in travel-time of the equipment can impact the efficiency of the operation tremendously (Yinghua et al, 2012;Zhou et al, 2017). Mining companies produce interchangeable products in the primary and mining leaders are increasingly looking at advanced technologies as they prepare for the future of businesses to turn challenges into opportunities.…”

“…Presently, it is possible to look across all different areas in a mine with IoT and people can identify patterns from seemingly unrelated variables (Yinghua et al, 2012;Khan et al, 2012;Sun et al, 2012;Dong et al, 2017;Behr et al, 2016;Zhou et al, 2017). The Internet of Things is speeding up the pace of feedback by delivering ultra-short-term interval controls, which means that people can look at things as they are happening and not after the fact (Atkins et al, 2010;Liu et al, 2013;Xu et al, 2014;Thomas and Rad, 2018).…”

“…In the absence of a controlled air system, miners must wait hours before restarting work to make sure that re-entering is safe (Sun et al, 2012;Dong et al, 2017). Through the incorporation of an aerial management scheme, mine managers, shift supervisors and miners are prepared to understand immediately if the pit is secure (Zhou et al, 2017).…”

Real-time Performance Evaluation of LTE for IIoT

“…Industrial use-case of remotely controlled vehicles offers a variety of traffic types and patterns including critical realtime data. Moreover, tele-remote operation and control have attracted significant attention of researchers in recent years [15][16][17]. The architecture of the system is shown in the Figure 1 and composes remote control station, remotely operated mining vehicle, and communication network.…”