Design of a mine ventilation system with multistage fanstations

One has to design the mine ventilation system while carrying out a mine design, the purpose of which is to provide enough fresh air for the working place underground, to sweep away the fumes and dust caused by excavation, to protect mine workers’ safety and health, and to guarantee production in a normal operation. In this paper, the authors propose a new mathematical programming model. They assume (1) the number and location of fanstations have already been determined according to the mining layout; and (2) the type of fans were given. Under these assumptions, the authors use the mathematical programming method to determine the optimum number of fans in each fanstation and related parameters to ensure the minimum power consumption of ventilation network system. A nonlinear mixed integer programming model is used for this problem.