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AN INVESTIGATION tool that can access sealed or inaccessible areas through a 100mm borehole, which has successfully been trialled at the Newstan and Austar collieries and deployed to the Moranbah North mine, is now available for the coal industry.

Developed by the Minerals Industry Safety and Health Centre and Geotechnical Systems Australia at the University of Queensland, the Borehole-based Investigation Tool was developed over a series of ACARP-funded projects.

The first project trialled a prototype while the second improved the probe. The final part of the project has been to complete development of the probe to deploy down 100mm unlined borehole to 1000 metres.

According to MISHC’s David Cliff, reaching 1000m depth and allowing communications was especially relevant given recent accidents in the US coal industry and at the Beaconsfield gold mine in Australia.

The latest version of the system is waterproof and equipped with down and side digital video cameras, atmospheric pressure and temperature monitoring, surface temperature monitoring, airflow, oxygen concentration, camera direction and speaker and microphone for underground communications.

The tool is fully portable and powered by a generator. The sensor compartments are filled with nitrogen and the computer is controlled with full data and video logging.

The device has been trialled at the Newstan and Austar longwall mines in New South Wales and was recently deployed from its base in Melbourne to the Moranbah North Colliery in Queensland.

Even though it was not used at Moranbah, Cliff said the deployment showed it could be quickly deployed within 12 hours of the call being received. The team was also able to carry out a risk assessment of its use.

Information on hire or purchase of the tool is now available through the developing companies.