Harmful respirable dust produced during longwall mining is a major concern for production, safety and the health of workers in the underground coal mining sector both in Australia and globally, Longwall personnel are exposed to harmful dust from multiple dust generation sources including, but not limited to intake entry, belt entry, stageloader/cnisher, shearer, shield advance and dust ingress from falling goal or over pressurisation of the goal the increase in production created from the advancement in longwall equipment, dust loads have significantly increased and this has resulted in a potentially greater exposure level to personnel. Metropolitan Colliery, located at Helensburgli in NSW, Australia, in conjunction with the University of Wollongong, P11/116 Laboratories and EnviroCon, has implemented a dust reduction program Utilising a recently developed Dust Mitigation Efficiency Model to quantify dust loads produced during the cutting cycle. With the quantification of.this benchmark dust load production along with the quantification of installed control efficiencies at independent sources of dust generation, Metropolitan Colliery, with the installation of the latest shearer scrubber technology has successfully reduced the respirable dust levels in excess of 70% of benchmark levels on their operating Iongwali This reduction will have a significant and immediate positive effebt on employees, production and operating costs which will be maintained throughout the life of the mine
