Gregory Bogin Jr., associate professor of mechanical engineering at Colorado School of Mines, has been awarded funding to develop two new testing facilities to improve understanding of methane gas explosions in coal mines.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (CDC-NIOSH) has committed $460,000 in funding over three years for a project led by Bogin to design an optically accessible 1/40th-scale version of a longwall coal mine for investigating ventilation and fire hazard mitigation strategies.
The nonprofit Alpha Foundation also recently announced it would provide Bogin and his team with $683,000 in funding over three years for the development of a world-class explosion test facility. The new Mines Gas Explosion Test Facility (GETF) will be capable of investigating the essential characteristics of turbulent high-speed deflagrations and transition to detonations as they relate to explosions in longwall coal mines.
Jurgen Brune, professor of practice and associate head of the Mining Engineering Department, is co-principal investigator on both projects. Richard Gilmore, assistant research professor in mining engineering, is also a co-PI on the Alpha Foundation project.
Both of the projects are related to a current five-year, $1.2 million CDC-NIOSH award that Bogin and Brune (lead PI) received to work on combustion modeling and spontaneous combustion prevention in longwall gobs. With the addition of these two new awards, Bogin and Brune have secured more than $3.5 million in funding over the last five years, positioning Mines as a leading research institution in the area of developing mitigation and prevention strategies for methane gas explosions.
CONTACT
Emilie Rusch, Public Information Specialist, Communications and Marketing | 303-273-3361 | erusch@mines.edu
Mark Ramirez, Managing Editor, Communications and Marketing | 303-273-3088 | ramirez@mines.edu