IIT-Kharagpur to offer course on safe mining

Why in news?

• Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur’s department of mining engineering is set to launch a new M Tech programme in ‘Safety, Health and Environment’ which will address safety measures in mining operations and emerging methods for safety management in order to deal with risk assessment in the industry.
• The course is slated to start from the July semester and will have an intake capacity of 11.
• Furthermore, the department will launch another M Tech programme in Geo-mechanics for Mineral and Energy Resources.

Mining accidents: –

• A mining accident is an accident that occurs during the process of mining minerals. Thousands of miners die from mining accidents each year, especially from underground coal mining, although hard rock mining is not immune from accidents.
• Coal mining is considered much more hazardous than hard rock mining due to flat-lying rock strata, generally incompetent rock, the presence of methane gas, and coal dust.
• Most of the deaths these days occur in developing countries, and rural parts of developed countries.
• Mining accidents can have a variety of causes, including leaks of poisonous gases such as hydrogen sulfide or explosive natural gases, especially firedamp or methane, dust explosions, collapsing of mine stopes, mining-induced seismicity, flooding, or general mechanical errors from improperly used or malfunctioning mining equipment (such as safety lamps or electrical equipment).
• Use of improper explosives underground can also cause methane and coal dust explosions.

(Industry)(Hindustan times)

Pic courtesy:College Pravesh