Application of Mixed Integer Programming to optimization of Mine Ventilation System; A Case Study

Mine ventilation is the movement of air within a mine via mechanical fans. Ventilation is an important aspect of any underground mining operation and is used to create a safe and comfortable working environment for miners. Mine ventilation systems typically employ mechanical fans to move air throughout the mine. The systems are designed to provide a quantity of air based on various factors such as equipment used, hazardous gases, and contaminants. Operation Research (OR) has been used in mining primarily for the development stages. Over the last few decades, engineers have begun to employ operations research to optimize ventilation systems to assist in achieving regulatory compliance, reduce ventilation costs, and improve efficiency. Airflow regulation optimization in mine ventilation networks is described as a minimization model, whose objective function is the minimum number of regulators and ventilation energy consumption. In this paper, at first we review the Operation Research (OR) methods to analyse mine ventilation system. Then, a case study was chosen to demonstrate the effects of the optimization model using Mixed Integer Programming (MIP). GAMS software was used to solve this MIP problem. Through solving the optimized model of the ventilation network, the results showed that the mathematical methods are very useful to determine optimum design of mine ventilation network relative to fan power costs.