CEMI has projects underway on Assessing rock mass response to hydraulic injection and Integrated personal protective equipment (IPPE). The issue in IPPE is that because of the financial unpredictability/risk of finding and developing new mines, there is an increasing emphasis on extending the life of a mine by digging deeper. The deeper a mine, the harsher the environment for the people and machines working at those depths for a variety of reasons:

 Increased heat

 Physical protection due to rock wall instability

 Fresh air

 Communication

 Navigation

CEMI is leading a project to develop the next generation of IPPE that will integrate many of the current technologies with other protective gear components required for ultra deep mining. It is anticipated that this IPPE will include:

 Cooling

 Filtered breathing

 Air quality monitoring

 Position Tracking (RFID)

 Noise Reduction

 Medical Monitoring (heart rate, breathing)

 Mine alerts

 Development of the IPPE is underway. For more information, contact Allan Akerman, R&D Program Director, [email protected]

 Also, rock instability in deep mines has the potential to create two problems:

1. Rock bursts and strainbursts – which can compromise the safety of personnel and capital assets.

2. Signficant disruptions to production schedules.

CEMI and a consortium of companies and research institutions have initiated a three-year research program to investigate hydraulic fracturing as a means to re-distribute stress in deep mines. This research aims to better:

 Understand how to use hydraulic injection to manage stresses locally, and potentially at a block scale

 The processes during hydraulic fracturing in tight shale formations

 Our ability to relate geophysical observables the the created fracture networks

 Our ability to optimize numerical modeling approaches for simulating hydraulic fracturing and hydraulic stimulation.

Three case studies have been identified and will proceed over the next three years. For more information, contact Damien Duff, Vice President, Geoscience & Geotechnical R&D, [email protected]