Towards the Development of a Low Cost Airborne Sensing System to Monitor Dust Particles after Blasting at Open-Pit Mine Sites

Abstract

Blasting is an integral part of large-scale open cut mining that often occurs in close proximity to population centers and often results in the emission of particulate material and gases potentially hazardous to health. Current air quality monitoring methods rely on limited numbers of fixed sampling locations to validate a complex fluid environment and collect sufficient data to confirm model effectiveness. This paper describes the development of a methodology to address the need of a more precise approach that is capable of characterizing blasting plumes in near-real time. The integration of the system required the modification and integration of an opto-electrical dust sensor, SHARP GP2Y10, into a small fixed-wing and multi-rotor copter, resulting in the collection of data streamed during flight. The paper also describes the calibration of the optical sensor with an industry grade dust-monitoring device, Dusttrak 8520, demonstrating a high correlation between them, with correlation coefficients (R2) greater than 0.9. The laboratory and field tests demonstrate the feasibility of coupling the sensor with the UAVs. However, further work must be done in the areas of sensor selection and calibration as well as flight planning.

Simultaneous multicopter-based air sampling and sensing of meteorological variables

“…Multicopters offer flexible maneuverability at low flight speed and the possibility of hovering (i.e., no horizontal movement). Their applications include meteorological and air quality measurements, e.g., particulate matter (Alvarado et al, 2015) or air samples for analyses of chemical composition (Chang et al, 2016), but on a smaller scale of several hundreds of meters. In addition, Neumann and Bartholomai (2015) and Palomaki et al (2017) showed that the onboard flight control sensors can be used to derive wind estimates from a multicopter's attitude control data.…”

The importance of public participation in monitoring risks in large-scale industrial projects: An Australian experience

“…Dust raised by blasting is one such example [10,11]. In passing it is worth a comment that the main purpose of blasting is comminution (reducing overburden and coal to a convenient size for handling by trucks and excavators).…”

“…Industry has mostly been slow to modernise its techniques [11] such as exploiting nitrogen dioxide fume patterns to quantify the dispersal of respiratory dust. Even more useful than this is the use of drones for this purpose, developed by university researchers [10] and younger more entrepreneurial companies [12].…”

Secure Data Storage Mechanism for Integration of Wireless Sensor Networks and Mobile Cloud

“…These requirements may impact other dimensions of the design space such as coverage and resources [6]. Current security mechanisms in ad-hoc sensor networks do not guarantee reliable and robust network functionality.…”