BMT WBM, a subsidiary of BMT Group, and SkillPro Services, have been recognised at the recent Australian Coal Association Research Program’s (ACARP) biennial awards ceremony for the ground breaking Active Barrier prototype system, which could play an integral role in enhancing the future safety of coal miners. The eight year project has seen a $1.6 million investment from ACARP, with the prototype successfully suppressing a series of coal dust explosions at a testing facility in South Africa. Using a flame detector to identify the approaching coal dust deflagration, the Active Barrier system successfully injected 120 litres of water within 250 milliseconds in order to suppress the explosion, as was predicted by BMT WBM’s computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modelling. 

David Proud, Business Development Manager for BMT WBM’s Machinery group comments: “The BMT WBM/SkillPro team are delighted to receive this excellence award from ACARP. It is recognition for the hard work put in and the challenges that have been overcome in designing this prototype over the last several years. 

David Humphreys, SkillPro’s Manager of the Active Barrier project comments: “This R&D project has involved high-end capability in analysis, design, and testing and was well suited to the BMT WBM/SkillPro combination. The system will continue to be tested and is expected to undergo substantial reconfiguration before it becomes a commercially viable product.” 

Bevan Kathage, Research Co-ordinator at ACARP says: “This world-first, cutting-edge research has produced a system that is so simple in that it doesn’t rely on a complicated set of elements working together at the same time.  If this system were to save just one life, the investment would have been worth it.”