Papers - Health and Safety in Mines - Experimental Air-conditioning for the Butte Mines. (With Discussion)

The application of artificial refrigeration, or air-conditioning, to the ventilation of deep, hot mines has long been a subject of interest to the operators of such properties. Artificial cooling of the air in theaters, railroad coaches, and various industrial plants has been so successful within recent years that it has been natural to assume that the adoption of similar methods would afford a ready solution to the difficult problem of mine ventilation. It should however, be obvious, that although there may be nothing technically impossible in the application of this process to mine ventilation there is a great economic distinction between the maintenance of a high standard of comfort for a large number of people in a relatively small space such as a theater and the cooling of air to improve working conditions for miners scattered throughout the extensive workings of a large mine. Many methods of air-conditioning have been considered by the management of the Anaconda Copper Mining Co. at various times, but until the development of the process to be described in this paper none has seemed economically practicable. The Ventilating Problem at Butte The main obstacle to satisfactory ventilation in the Butte mines is the normally high temperature of the granite country rock. In the present operating zone, rock temperatures as high as 120' F. have been noted, and in some parts of the district the rate of increase of temperature with depth has ranged as high as 3.5" F. per 100 ft. Other factors, such as the decay of mine timber and the oxidation of sulfide minerals in the ore bodies, contribute to raise the temperature of the air in the working places but, particularly in the development of the mines to greater depth, the naturally high temperature of the rock is of predominant importance. In few other places, probably, are the ordinary ventilating measures more hindered than at Butte. At an operating depth now exceeding 3000 ft., all of the air required for ventilation must pass through timbered shafts which, because of heavy ground, are of small size and offer great resistance to the flow of air. Shaft compartments are rarely more than 4.5 X 5 ft., and the shaft area open to the flow of air usually does not exceed 65 sq. ft.; in only two shafts is the area as great as 85 sq. feet.