Post by smshogun on Dec 1, 2018 1:37:17 GMT -5
I have been following a thread recently in an engineering forum for professional engineers and it overlaps many other areas, so I thought I would post the outline of it as many people will undoubtedly laugh at it as I did, and generally think what a bunch of tossers these academics really are.
It involves a proposal to use old deep coal mines and shallow tunnels from a variety of sources to grow food using hydroponics and growing lights and coal mines were specifically mentioned as they had lots of miles of underground roadways they could use to grow food; but it was when I read their proposal that I cringed when I realised that for academics they are particularly thick and have no understanding of old, closed coal mines and the conditions underground.
Their first proposal was to open up the filled shafts and they have no clue of how they are filled in, on the filling system I developed and was adopted across the Midlands was to stop off the pit bottom roadways at the edge of the shaft pillar and fill the entire pit bottom with concrete up to the stoppings in the roadways and 30M up the shaft, this was then filled with 30M of limestone and then 10M of concrete cap, another 30M of concrete and another 10M of concrete cap, right up to the surface before being plugged with a variety of concrete sectional pieces which were bolted together and filled with concrete. They had no idea of how to break through these caps without damaging the shaft lining and how they were going to get the highly compressed limestone out; and what they were going to do with the inevitable water and gas in the shaft. They appeared t be under the impression they could be dug out by a man with a shovel.
When they got to the bottom of the shaft they were going to use a coal shearer to drive through the concrete, really? I would use a heading machine such as a Dosco but they are no more so importing heading machines would be a must at around £5m each, and how would they get them down there and build them up I the bottom of the shaft? one idiot claimed they would crane them down in one piece and use ladders to go down the shaft; I fell off my chair laughing.
Great until a pick hits and old or deformed ring or other metal hardware which was left down there resulting in a nice juicy spark.
If they dealt with opening up the shaft, replaced the damaged linings and managed to put a ladder down and found a heading machine small enough to down a shaft in one piece with a crane of suitable size with enough rope to get it down there in one piece, how are they going to power it? over to the electricians on that one, how about 100 cap lamp batteries!
What about the old roadways full of water and gas, what about the floor lift, and what about having to back rip miles of roadways, some over 100 years old, they hadn't given this consideration.
There were some brilliant ideas though.
They would give every man two torches, no mention of self rescuers or FLP requirements, mines are full of CO2, they are also full of methane, carbon monoxide, and many other gases, they were even talking about pumping more CO2 down them, well, that's killed everyone then, and they were proposing using mine water for irrigation as old mines are full of water? yes, that brown ochre filled stuff which is highly toxic.
There was a lot more and this is from academics of Nottingham University, an area full of coal mining.
Look it up and read it if you want a good laugh because they certainly know nothing about mining.
