MechChem Africa March-April 2024

CSIR safety innovations presented at Mining Indaba

Riaan Bergh – Impact Area Manager at the CSIR with responsibility for health and safety-related testing and training services for the mining industry – talks to MechChem Africa about some of the innovative solutions presented at the Investing in African Mining Indaba in Cape Town.

ent safety awareness training. “But we needed to take it a step further. Large explosions are rare nowadays, but underground fires are not. Fires create non respirable atmospheres, where people cannot breathe due to toxic gases, carbon-monoxide or fumes from burning plastics and rubbers. So we have produced a number of innova tions, most notably, in the field of self-rescuer devices, which are now being made by local and international manufacturers. But the specific training gap that we saw was to pro vide a much better basis for training miners how to respond confidently and effectively in an emergency such as a fire. Hence the shift to competency-based safety training,” says Riaan Bergh. “This is where virtual reality comes in. If you put a person in front of a training facilita tor and show them how to use a self-rescuer, they might pay partial attention. But if you put a VR-headset onto the person while simulat ing an emergency scenario, the emotions start to flow very quickly. So we create actual underground emergency scenarios that help psycho-emotional responses to kick in, which we use to ensure trainees keep cool heads and make the right decisions while being challenged by the high-pressure VR experi ence,” he says. Competence involves the ability to recall and apply the knowledge learned in real emergency situations. But it also enables mine operators to develop and test their response plans to emergency scenarios. What immedi ate action needs to be taken and how to miti gate the harm done in the event of different emergency situations. “It is fast becoming the tool for developing execution strategies to mitigate against harm,” he says. “The physical donning (the deploying of the self-rescuer) needs to be embedded into muscle memory so that users develop un conscious competence. They need to learn through motion, so they can do it quickly and correctly when their lives really are in danger,” Bergh continues. CSIR’s competence training approach also involves expectation management. “The Expectation management and confidence

chemical reaction involved to produce the oxygen in a self-rescuer is exothermic, so a short while after the mouthpiece is put on, the air being breathed is going to feel hot, at around 50° C. In addition, the breathing resistance is higher. This can lead to confusion and panic, people removing the mouthpiece and running to the refuge chamber: a wrong and very dangerous response! “So we have just developed and patented a small training device called the Expectation Trainer that enables people to experience what it feels like to use a self-rescuer, in terms of the elevated temperature and the additional breathing resistance. It makes the reasons for modulating exertion far more obvious: walk do not run, for example, so that the rate at which oxygen supplied will be suf ficient,” he informs MechChem Africa . Also, some mines are starting to use their end-of-life units as an additional training tool

A t the African Mining Indaba in Cape Town earlier this year, the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI), together with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the Mandela Mining Precinct (MMP), showcased an array of technologies aimed at unlocking innovation in the mining industry. “The Mandela Mining Precinct is a CSIR and Minerals Council co-hosted pro gramme funded by the DSI and the Minerals Council South Africa,” begins the CSIR’s Riaan Bergh, a Mechanical Engineer with a Master’s degree in Engineering Management. The MMP came out of the Mining Phakisa, from which the South African Mineral Extraction, Research, Development and Innovation (SAMERDI) initiative also evolved. “The MMP is a public-private partnership that plays a crucial role in implementing the SAMERDI strategy, managing RD&I programmes executed by research partners and other collaborators such as the CSIR, universities and a number of private institu tions,” he adds. The flagship innovation on show at the DTI/CSIR/MMP stand at the Mining Indaba involved highly successful work being done on VR-enabled competency based safety training. “This programme originated from our existing and long-standing safety awareness training for mineworkers. We present these courses on a weekly basis at our Kloppersbos fire and explosion testing, training and R&D facility,” Bergh tells MechChem Africa . “There we can create full scale coal-dust explosions and we have long used this capability to pres VR-enabled competency based training

Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) is widely accepted for assessing the safety of mine walkways. By mounting the radar antenna onto a drone, a flight path can be used to safely cover inspection areas that are difficult or hazardous to access.

38 ¦ MechChem Africa • March-April 2024