SECTION I: GENERAL INFORMATION
MINING ENGINEERING AT
THE UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY
From
an enrollment of 273 students in 1876, the University of Kentucky has evolved
from an Agricultural and Mechanical school to a state, coeducational,
nationally accredited institution composed of
15 colleges, University Extension, and Graduate School. Currently, the University has an enrollment
of more than 25,000 students on the Lexington Campus. The university's programs are offered by nearly 9,000 faculty and
staff.
A
small city in itself, the University has its own post office, bookstore,
theaters, restaurants, barber shop, newspapers, radio station, television
network, photographic service, printing plant, safety and security force, and
hospital. The 670‑acre Lexington
campus has more than 100 major buildings, including the Mining and Mineral
Resources Building, which was dedicated officially on April 8, 1988.
With
the opening of the Mining and Mineral Resources Building, of which we occupy
nearly one‑half, the facilities for mining engineering have become among
the most modern in the country. The
opportunities for experimentation, research, and graduate study have expanded
commensurately with the tripling of the space available. New, digitally controlled testing machines
for rock mechanics, pilot‑scale‑sized ventilation tunnels with
remote sensing and computer control of airflow, coal and petrography
laboratories, mine electrical systems laboratory, an environmental laboratory, and
an array of computers, which are networked throughout the building, all come
together to support the advanced research needed for modern mining. Inasmuch as the other major tenant of the
building is the Kentucky Geological Survey, a tremendous working resource is
available for research on reserves evaluation and characterization.
Of
primary importance among the auxiliary services provided by the University is
its system of libraries. Resources of the W.T. Young Library and associate
libraries include more than two million volumes and 3.2 million microform
units. In terms of numbers of volumes,
the University library is one of the top 50 research libraries in the United
States.
The
Robert E. Shaver Library of Engineering, occupying the entire third floor of
the F. Paul Anderson Tower, is a division of the University's library
system. The library has developed
subject strength in such areas as nuclear engineering, mining and energy
engineering, air and water pollution control, and materials science, in
addition to the basic disciplines of engineering. These subject areas, as well as allied fields, are manifested in
the library's collection of approximately 31,000 volumes. The latest findings of engineering research
are reported in over 700 periodical
subscriptions in the library.
LOCATION
The
University of Kentucky is located in Lexington, a growing city with a
population in excess of 260,000 in the heart of the renowned Bluegrass region:
an area of gently rolling land of unexcelled beauty with more than 300 horse
farms. Known as the thoroughbred horse
center of America, Lexington has one of the finest race tracks in the country:
Keeneland Race Course. The world's
largest loose‑leaf tobacco markets are located here, as are many
industries and corporate headquarters, including Lexmark, Toyota Motor
Manufacturing USA, Inc., Ashland Oil's Valvoline Division, and approximately 40
coal-related companies.
Lexington,
only 80 miles south of Cincinnati on Interstate 75 and 83 miles east of
Louisville on Interstate 64, is less than a one‑day drive from all major
metropolitan centers in the eastern and Midwestern areas of the country.
Because
the University of Kentucky is located in Lexington, its Department of Mining
Engineering has the advantage of being located at the center of the state that
is a leading producer of coal. The
benefits resulting from the dominance of its coal industry are seen further by
its location midway between the Appalachian Coal Basin (Eastern Kentucky) and
the Eastern Interior Coal Basin (Western Kentucky). Among mining people, Lexington is humorously referred to as the
world's largest and finest coal camp.
The
Lexington area is so rich in heritage that sightseeing is a major attraction,
encompassing more than 200 years of living history. The presence of the University of Kentucky has enhanced the area,
with a proliferation of functions ranging from the A.B. Chandler Medical Center
to Rupp Arena, one of the world's largest basketball arenas, with a seating
capacity of 23,600 fans. Kentucky's
sports prowess is a matter of permanent record and is highly visible in the
national sports archives. Other
significant features include Transylvania University, the oldest institution of
higher education west of the Allegheny Mountains; Lexington Theological
Seminary; Kentucky Episcopal Seminary; and Ashland Baptist College. Lexington has the largest Community Concert
Association in the country, where renowned artists and speakers appear
regularly. Of great interest are the
Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra, a strong chamber music series, the Lexington
Ballet, and Arts Place. Lexington is
also a strong theater town, served by several regular companies and various
touring groups.
The
climate is moderate with cool plateau breezes, cool summer nights, and no
prolonged periods of heat, cold, rain, wind, or snow. Kentucky abounds in facilities that appeal to those who like the
out‑of‑doors. Its
outstanding system of State parks, together with the Daniel Boone National
Forest, provide boating and associated water sports, fishing, hiking, camping
and horseback riding. The famous Red
River Gorge area of the Daniel Boone National Forest, a favorite of backpackers
and canoeists, is only 50 miles by expressway from Lexington. Kentucky has good canoeing and white water
rivers, and is famous for its caves and natural bridges. The Bluegrass region is one of the best
areas in the United States for biking as it has a vast network of paved country
roads from which to choose.
The
optimal blending of the old with the new, together with the history, location,
and resources available at the University of Kentucky, results in an ideal
environment for the scholastic and professional development of the serious
mining engineering student.
The University of Kentucky’s engineering and
computer science faculty, numbering approximately 140, are nationally and
internationally recognized. Among
current and emeriti faculty, one is a member of the National Academy of
Engineering, more that 20 have received the Presidential Young Investigator or
CAREER Development Award from the National Science Foundation, and more than 25
are fellows in one or more professional societies. Twenty-three endowed faculty positions have been committed to
support faculty who are nationally recognized for their excellence in teaching
and distinguished scholarship.
The
College includes eight centers and consortia, including the Kentucky
Transportation Center, the Center for Robotics and Manufacturing Systems, the
Consortium for Fossil Fuel Liquefaction Science, Vibro-Acoustics Consortium,
Painting Technology Consortium, the Center for Aluminum Technology, the Center
for Micro-Magnetic and Electronic Devices, and the Electron Microscopy
Facility. The College is also
affiliated with the Center for Applied Energy Research, Advanced Science and
Technology Commercialization Center, the Center for Biomedical Engineering, and
the Laboratory for Advanced Networking.
DEPARTMENT OF MINING
ENGINEERING
The
University of Kentucky's Department of Mining Engineering has the distinction
of being both among the oldest and newest programs of its type in the
nation. It is one of the oldest in that
the program was founded as the School of Civil and Mining Engineering in 1866;
newest in that it was only 1982, after a varied history of change reflecting
conditions in the mining industry, that the department was upgraded from a transition
program in Civil Engineering to departmental status.
In
1910, a college was established and given the name Mines and Metallurgy, but
seven years later the college was amalgamated into a department within the
College of Engineering. In 1966 the mining
department was realigned with Civil Engineering. In 1977, the University Board of Trustees authorized the reestablishment
of Mining Engineering as a separate and distinct department. In 1988, the Department moved to the Mining
and Mineral Resources Building.
In
keeping with its history and the renewed emphasis of the University's
commitment to mining engineering, a distinguished national and international
faculty has been assembled. Hence, in a
continuing pursuit for excellence, the University of Kentucky's traditional
land‑grant teaching, research, and service function is expanded further
through the addition of faculty members recruited from among the world's finest
mining programs. This faculty gives the
Department of Mining Engineering an increased academic capability to become a
leader in both the State's and the nation's minerals industry.
STATEMENT
OF CAPABILITIES
The
Department of Mining Engineering at the University of Kentucky has been favored
with an excellent faculty, a sufficiency of space, and an abundance of modern
equipment. This document attempts to
describe succinctly the Department's capabilities in research and development
for the benefit of potential research collaborators and sponsors. In summary, the mining faculty has access to
25,259 square feet of space and to equipment with an original purchase value in
excess of $1.6 million. They are served
by an elaborate but flexible computing network containing personal computers,
an office LAN, and an integral bridge to the College of Engineering and
university computing environments.
There is unlimited electronic mail access.
Although
described separately, the facilities of the UK Center for Applied Energy
Research, CAER, are readily available to departmental researchers. A number of completed cooperative projects
point to the open relationship between the Center and the Department. The CAER is a 60,000 square foot facility
containing over $7 million in process development and analytical equipment.
FACULTY
The
brief biographies that follow show the array of talents and interests possessed
by the faculty members in mining engineering.
More complete résumés are available for each individual.
John
G. Groppo (Ph.D., University of Kentucky), Adjunct Assistant
Professor: research conducted at the
Center for Applied Energy Research.
Research interests includes mineral processing, waste management, and
environmental remediation.
Rick
Q. Honaker (Ph.D., Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University),
Associate Professor: mineral processing, coal preparation, and fine particle
separation.
G.T
Lineberry (Ph. D., West Virginia University), Professor: mine plant
engineering; underground mining operations.
Research interests include evaluation, selection, and design of mobile
mine equipment; advanced mechanical systems; operations research.
B.
K. Parekh (Ph. D., The Pennsylvania State University), Adjunct Associate
Professor: physical beneficiation, flotation, fine particle technologies,
dewatering; surface, colloid, and solution chemistry. Research, at the Center for Applied Energy Research, includes
basic and applied subjects for clean coal technology.
Joseph
Sottile, Jr. (Ph.D., The Pennsylvania State University), Associate
Professor: mine electrical systems and
monitoring and control. Research
interests include condition-based maintenance of electrical machinery, fault
diagnostics, and mine electrical system safety.
Richard
J. Sweigard (Ph. D., The Pennsylvania State University, P. E.), Chairman
and Professor: geotechnology, groundwater, soil reconstruction, surface
mining. Research interests include soil
compaction, differential settling of mine backfill, reclamation, and slope
stability.
Daniel
Tao (Ph. D., Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University),
Assistant Professor: mineral processing, coal preparation, surface
chemistry. Research interests include fine particle separation,
fine coal dewatering, column flotation, waste water treatment, and solid waste
utilization.
Kot
F. Unrug (D. Sc., Ph. D., Academy of Mining and Metallurgy, Krakow,
Poland), Professor: underground construction, mine design, strata control. Research interests include broad aspects of
applied rock mechanics; roof control; subsidence; field, scale model and laboratory
testing.
Andrzej
M. Wala (Ph. D., Academy of Mining and Metallurgy, Krakow, Poland),
Professor: mine ventilation, mine electricity, elements of mining. Research interests include dynamics of flow
in mine ventilation networks; monitoring and control of ventilation networks;
expert systems applications in mining; dynamics of diesel exhaust gas
concentrations in confined headings; industrial testing; and computer
simulation.
Jon C. Yingling (Ph. D.,
University of Pittsburgh), Associate Professor: operations research and
industrial engineering in mining and mineral preparation. Research interests include optimization
approaches to flow sheet design for mineral processing plants, liberation
models, control systems for mine conveyor networks, and probabilistic
approaches to slope stability analysis.
FACILITIES
The
Mining and Mineral Resources Building, located on Rose Street near the center
of campus, is a handsome and spacious structure that houses four principal
occupants: The Kentucky Geological Survey, the Department of Mining
Engineering, the Kentucky Water Resources Research Institute, and the coal
group of the Department of Geological Sciences. Mining has approximately 42 percent of the assigned space in the
building. Specifically, this is a total
of 25,259 square feet of space, of which 14,106 is devoted to laboratories;
7,898 to offices, classrooms, and other non-laboratory space; and 3,255 is shared
with other building occupants.
Laboratories
are designated by their function; space exists for each major sub discipline of
mining engineering: rock mechanics testing, rock mechanics modeling,
ventilation, gas and dust, mine electrical systems, coal preparation unit
operations, coal testing, microscopic analysis of surfaces, environment and
geotechnology, and computation and design.
In addition, there are suitable rock cutting and shaping facilities,
mineral processing preparation areas, and field studies staging areas.
COMPUTING
The
University of Kentucky has installed an IBM
Multiprise 3000 H50 as its main unit for administrative computing. High performance research computing can be
conducted on the HP Superdome cluster, composed of four HP 9000 Superdome
servers. This cluster, composed of 224
HP PA-RISC 8700 processors, has an aggregate (peak) rating of 672 GFLOPS.
EQUIPMENT
A. COAL AND MINERAL PREPARATION
Float-Sink Laboratory:
vented cabinets for testing coal densities in heavy organic fluids.
Coal Drying Room:
controlled ovens that conform with ASTM standards for air drying of coal.
Crushing, Grinding, and
Sample Preparation: Hardgrove grindability tester, hammer mill, Holmes 10 x 15
hammer-mill crusher, 5-in by 6-in jaw crusher, Chipmunk jaw crusher, riffle,
Pro-splitter table and vibratory feeder, Gilson testing screens, Ro-Tap sieve
shakers, suitable sieves, sieve cleaner, gyratory screen separator, Draiswerke
pulverizing system, Holmes pulverizer, variety of scales and balances, Buehler
polishing table.
Dust-generating
equipment is appropriately enclosed and vented; equipment used on potentially
explosive materials is shielded and sealed to guard again electrical spark.
Unit Processing
Laboratory (wet): Deister table, Mozley table, 18 x 24 commercial jig, 4 x 6
jig, Carpco portable laboratory cyclone unit, Krebs dense medium cyclone system
instrumented with data acquisition and computer control, Franz isodynamic
separator, wet magnetic separator, high-tension electrostatic separator,
flotation cells (Denver, Wemco, Hazen-Quinn), batch pressure filter, wet-vac
wet sieve tester, air-jet sieve, centrifuge, batch vacuum filter.
B. CHEMICAL AND SURFACE ANALYSIS
Coal Petrography and
Mineralogy: ISI scanning electron microscope with microanalyzer attachment;
optical microscopes: Bausch & Lomb Sterozoom, Nikon, Unitron binocular;
Buehler Micromet microhardness tester.
This laboratory is equipped with a darkroom.
Coal Testing and
Analysis: Leco proximate analyzer, Leco sulfur determinator, Leco automatic
calorimeter, Leco CHN elemental analyzer, Microtrac II particle size analyzer,
Parr adiabatic calorimeter, Preiser/Mineco rapid sulfur analyzer, Fisher
Isotemp programmable ashing furnace, density gradient column.
Surface
Characterization: Komline-Sanderson
Zeta meter; Rame-Hart contact angle goniometer; Metrohm computerized titration
potentiometry; Tronac computerized titration microcalorimetry; Sanplatec vacuum
dessicators; Orion Research Microprocessor pH/mV meter 811; Orion combined pH
electrodes, platinum/combined redox electrodes, and ion-selective electrodes;
Orion dissolved oxygen sensor; foam/froth stabometer; potential-controllable
microflotaion cell.
C. ROCK
MECHANICS
Testing:
Satec Stiff Testing System, model C600MB, 300-ton capacity, configured for
compressive testing; Satec Stiff Testing System, model TC-55, 25-ton capacity
configured for both compressive and tensile testing (both machines are
digitally controlled and have digital data acquisition systems); direct shear
machine. Photoelastic apparatus with
bi-axial chamber allows the studying of stresses under two-dimensional loading
conditions.
Modeling: The modeling
laboratory is built with a stiff floor that may be used as a resistance plate
for large-scale testing of rock or support systems. The breech of a naval gun has been converted into a high-pressure
triaxial chamber for rock specimens of up to one cubic foot.
Field Studies: Equipment
readily available for field research includes instruments for stress
determination, monitoring of support performance, measurement of deformation
and strain, bore scoping, and in situ testing of rock properties.
D. VENTILATION
The laboratory devoted
to mine ventilation is well equipped for both research and instruction. The laboratory gives the student
"hands-on" experience with ventilation instrumentation in addition to
supporting instruction in ventilation theory.
The laboratory has a series of wind tunnels, ducting, and
instrumentation for pressure, flow and air quality measurements. A number of
computer packages are available for comparing simulation output with laboratory
experimental data. These packages are
sufficient for full-scale mine ventilation network analysis.
Air Flow Studies:
- Low turbulence wind
tunnel with 400mm by 400mm measuring chamber, controllable velocity range is
0-13 meters per second;
- An axial fan testing
stand, including a 30-inch diameter wind tunnel, consisting of a 34-inch
adjustable pitch axial fan, 25-horsepower motor speed frequency driver,
computerized monitoring and control system allow for the remote monitoring and
control of the fan speed and blade pitch;
- An auxiliary tubing
ventilation system consisting of 150 feet of reinforced 18-inch diameter tubing
network combined with two 21-inch diameter auxiliary axial fans that can be
connected in series or parallel;
- A climatic simulation
unit that demonstrates the sensitivity of the psychrometric values to the many
parameters of the underground environment;
- Physical model of a
mine ventilation network, based on four-inch diameter PVC pipe, incorporated with a mine ventilation
expert system to achieve remote monitoring and control for both research and
teaching purposes;
- Precision smoke
tunnel.
Flow Measurements: Thermo (hot-wire)
anemometers, vane anemometers (both mechanical and electronic), Pitot tubes;
Pressure Measurements: Incline manometers,
portable precision electronic manometers with a range of 1.0 Pa (N/m2);
absolute pressure: aneroid barometers, electronic absolute pressure gauges.
Air Quality Measurements: Instrumentation is
available for the following gases: CO, CO2, CH4, O2,
NOx; coal dust analysis: gravimetric, light-scattering Miniram.
E. MINE
ELECTRICAL SYSTEMS
The Mine Electrical
Systems Laboratory is both a research and teaching laboratory. Power equipment includes a dissectible
transformer, induction motors, dc motors and generators, synchronous machines,
a Universal Laboratory Machine, and a ground fault protection
demonstrator. Control equipment
includes an ac motor controller, dc motor controller, solid-state training
panel, ac electrical training panel, dc electrical panel, two Allen Bradley SLC
5/03 programmable logic controllers and control software, and a 10-hp
programmable reduced voltage motor starter housed inside a conveyor belt
starter enclosure. Data collection and
analysis equipment includes a 100 MHz storage oscilloscope, a 20 MHz portable
oscilloscope, 11 MHz function generator, an I/O Tech Daqbook 200, and I/O tech
Daqbook 210, a wide assortment of voltage and current probes, digital meters,
and data collection and post processing software.
F. ENVIRONMENT AND GEOTECHNOLOGY
Giddings soil probe
equipped with recording cone penetrometer; frame, test tank, air pallet, and
hydraulic ram for modeling ripper studies; nuclear density gauge; Geotest
master triaxial permeability panel and triaxial load frame.
G. SAMPLE PREPARATION
The department has rock
saws, drills, grinders and polishers.
Equipment is maintained separately for coal and non-coal samples.