Mining Magazine > Panorama > Micro seismic technology locates ‘trapped’ miners

SureWave Technology has developed micro seismic technology that can be used from the mine surface to successfully locate personnel trapped underground.  

Demonstrating the system on 23 February, the UK-based company, located miners ‘trapped’ within a fully functioning longwall coal mine in north west Virginia, in just over an hour. The miners were asked to strike the roof of the mine with a 6”x 6”x 42” crib block, commonly found in coal mines. The system filtered out the majority of the background noises in the mine to clearly identify the miners’ location in two separate tests, at 238m (780 feet) and at 317m (1040 feet).

‘Based on today’s test, we are confident our state-of-the-art technology would be able to locate miners trapped to a depth of 2000 feet (over 600m),’ stated SureWave Technology managing director Philip Shaw.

‘Given the system’s ability to accurately locate underground acoustic events many thousands of times smaller than the noise generated by the activity from the working mine, the technology is ideal to detect events underground and locate these signals in a few seconds.’

The technology was originally developed to monitor mine stresses to give advanced warning of structural failure in UK coal mines. It offers mine owners the ability to monitor stresses within a mine, enabling them to be forewarned and hence prevent a calamitous event, while at the same time offering a facility to locate anyone who may be trapped by other events.