Mining health research project underway in new Holden Hall

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research 1:57 Mining health research project underway in new Holden Hall

By:

Tonia Moxley

10 Mar 2022 122

For the past three years, Mining and Minerals Engineering graduate researcher Nestor Santa has been working on new ways to monitor dust in underground coal environments. Days after moving into the newly-renovated Holden Hall, he and the rest of the team, led by Associate Professor Emily Sarver, was back to work. For the first time, Santa said all the resources and equipment he needs are under one roof.

My name is Nestor Center. I work with Dr. Silber and I worked on developing a monitoring technology for, let's say, the improvement of the safety and underground or apartments. Or get them more tools to to avoid exposure to high concentrations of dust. That's what we need. Because right now we can measure the dust and have a general idea of how much we have that if we are able to separate or say, Okay, I have this amount of silica in this task. We can definitely work or have more or tools to start developing control strategy. So let's say I have a lot of silica particle, that means there's an important source of those particles somewhere. So let me go and check how we can control that specific amount of silica. For example, the next step or the workforce the next few years would be to start working on, on that device that will allow us to take pictures into view and analyze those using ABS Marvel, something like that. Being really fun because when I arrived here I didn't know anything about microscopy or, or image processing and all of that. It's been a journey of learning a lot, but it's, it's, it's great. I love it.

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