While the technology for cooling mines is in place, the costs of
operating this technology in the deeper, hotter mines of the future
will become prohibitive.
The use of underground water-vapour refrigeration plants for mine
cooling has thus been investigated by the environmental safety and
health programme of CSIR Mining Technology.
The investigation showed this technology to be a viable
mine-cooling strategy, and to offer considerable benefits,
including ease of maintenance, environment-friendliness, a more
stable performance, less stringent and more simple evaporator and
condensor designs, reduced running costs, reliability and
simplicity.
Although these plants are currently more capital-intensive than
their conventional counterparts, the capital cost of the
installations is likely to decrease in relative terms as the
technology becomes more firmly established.
Furthermore, the increased capital cost is more than offset by the
benefits offered, although, at present, they are difficult to
quantify due to a lack of experiential information.