Dust suppression
Mideco fends off secondary dust exposure, COVID-19 DUST CONTROL ENGINEERING SPECIALIST MIDECO COMBATS TWO CENTRAL PROBLEMS FOR MINE OPERATORS – DUST EXPOSURE AND BODY TEMPERATURE SPIKES – WITH A SINGLE SOLUTION: BAT BOOTH 2.0.
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fter speaking at the Smart Mining conference in Denver, Colorado, in 2019, Mideco director Melton White heard an intriguing presentation on incidents in American mines arising from heat stress affecting workers. White, who developed the Bat Booth personnel de-dusting system recognised by BHP as the Best Innovative Safety Product of 2016, sought out the presenter. Their conversation opened his eyes to the potential of an extra safety function – a temperature check that could detect possible viral infections as well as heat stress. “I’ve not spoken to this woman again since, but everything she said made sense and planted a seed in
my head,” White says. The Melbourne-based dust-control expert was already familiar with the dangers of very high temperatures at Australian mine sites. “When our body temperature elevates, we lose many cognitive abilities even though we may not be sick,“ he tells Safe to Work. “That means when a driver is operating a loader or forklift under extreme temperatures, he or she is no longer driving that machine safely.” The enhanced Bat Booth 2.0 has a speedy intelligent function, so a mine’s first responders can act before a heat-affected employee’s condition became critical. Within 15 seconds of an individual entering the de-dusting booth, the system automatically
The Bat Booth outlet is easily the cleanest place in an entire mine site.
SAFETOWORK.COM.AU 18 SEP-OCT 2020
The Bat Station facial recognition function captures body temperature.
measures their body temperature and reports the result in real-time to managers at any location. Ironically, although White was aware of the potential of temperature checks to guard against the spread of viral infections at work sites, the development of Bat Booth 2.0 was in train long before the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic. “We were well and truly under way through the design phase for Bat Booth 2.0 months before the pandemic hit,” White says. “In fact, if it weren’t for COVID-19, Bat Booth 2.0 would have been launched sooner.” Among the hurdles was the search for an appropriately sensitive infrared sensor. Commonly used heat measuring
