BBE, a mine ventilation and refrigeration engineering firm, recently released the latest version of its VUMA Live software offering. This enables real-time monitoring of mines’ underground ventilation and cooling systems.
The latest version of Vuma Live enables remote monitoring and control of mine ventilation and cooling systems.
Christo Visagie, Director at BBE, says the latest version of VUMA Live was developed with the assistance of ventilation and refrigeration industry experts to bring its user interface in line with that of the traditional supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) tools used by mines.
“It has a similar control interface, alarm function and historical trending, and enables open communication with various other industrial hardware systems without the need for further third-party development tools or purchased systems,” he says.
“The VUMA Live interface makes use of a 3D environment that our ventilation clients are familiar with as they have been using the VUMA ecosystem. With the latest version of VUMA Live, we can monitor and control underground ventilation equipment remotely and program control philosophies using standard Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) that are already being used at the mines.”
Visagie says that when it was launched initially, VUMA Live was ahead of its time in terms of technology – and its adoption was limited by the technologies then in place at mines and in their underground environments.
“However, as the equipment and communication systems at mines have been modernised, we have developed VUMA Live as an integrated ventilation control system – a digital twin of the underground mine environment. In the latest version we have updated the user interface and integrated it with other subsystems to ensure it works efficiently.”
He adds that VUMA Live can be used to monitor and to simulate working conditions in underground mines, because it is integrated with the rest of the ecosystem, enabling users to simulate, predict and foresee specific scenarios accurately using live information. Traditional SCADA tools used for ventilation systems were mainly monitoring systems that allowed an operator to see live information.
“VUMA Live feeds information into the VUMA Network solver, and with that we can flag changes in the environment and predict timelines to raise awareness and prompt investigations when necessary. The technology can also adjust the ventilation system automatically if necessary, based on predefined criteria, to mitigate the predicted changes before they occur,” says Visagie.
He adds that although similar systems have been operating around the world for some time, the technology is fairly new for South Africa, so adoption and understanding of the system among local mining companies is a relatively slow process. “Our biggest hurdle is the technology infrastructure in existing mines. South Africa has a lot of older mines that do not have the infrastructure and equipment needed to adopt VUMA Live,” he says.
“Hence BBE has explored environmental monitoring solutions that can be integrated with advanced controls, such as VUMA Live, for mine ventilation monitoring systems.”
BBE aims to develop VUMA Live to become a complete ventilation monitoring and control system that integrates seamlessly into existing SCADA systems.
“Our goal is to provide a complete solution to control the underground mining environment. Integration with other systems and technologies is key to this endeavour,” Visagie says.
For more information visit: https://bbe.co.za
