Methane capture – Trolex looks at the implications, Industrea sells more to China

The advance of methane recovery monitoring equipment technology is helping companies improve safety and generate new revenue. Phil McLean, Senior Engineer at gas sensing specialist Trolex explains the opportunities ahead. Underground mines are the single largest source of coal mine methane (CMM) emissions in most countries, although CMM is also produced from surface mines and as a result of post mining activities such as coal processing, storage and transportation. It is a greenhouse gas that has a global warming potential (GWP) 21 times as great as CO₂ thus its escape into the atmosphere is clearly to be avoided. To put the scale of methane emissions into perspective, it is estimated that by 2020 CMM emissions from the world’s coal mines will be some 40 billion m³/y, about a 30% increase from current levels and about 8% of the total methane emissions from human activity. (more…)