Still in its development stages, the breathing simulator will enable underground miners to experience the conditions they may be faced with in an emergency situation when they have to don a self-contained self-rescuer (SCSR).

Emergency conditions including humidity, hot air, breathing resistance and exercise will be simulated in an attempt to get miners accustomed to the effects of an SCSR before they encounter a real-life emergency.

It is this kind of training which could save the life of a miner in an emergency situation, according to Simtars researcher Dr Jan Oberholzer.

“The purpose of the simulator is to teach miners about the physiological burden that a chemical self-rescuer places on a body,” he said.

“It is necessary to train workers so they are used to the effects of a chemical self-rescuer. In an emergency an untrained person is at a higher risk than a trained person.

“This is a training aid that will make them used to the feeling of that self-rescuer so that they do not possibly discard a working self-rescuer because they think it is not working."

Last year Queensland mines inspectors found alarming weaknesses in miners’ responses to a simulated gas explosion underground.

In a simulated emergency test at Anglo Coal’s Grasstree mine it was found the mine's crews had issues with the donning and changeovers of SCSRs to compressed air breathing apparatus (CABA) indicating there had been little training for their use, which could have been fatal if the emergency had been real.

Three months into the project Simtars is “progressing” with the development of an affordable simulator prototype.

“At the moment we are developing a lab prototype which is about 80 percent finished which can be used to evaluate the equipment characteristics so that we can come up with a final spec,” Oberholzer said.

One device Simtars is investigating would see a person breathing into an apparatus simulating the air provided by the self-rescuer while walking on a treadmill.

Hot air and resistance would be simulated in the device so the subject would not be able to breathe as he normally would.

Oberholzer said he hoped to develop a device which could be provided to a mine so it could be used before sending someone underground, the employee could be trained, and the training could be regularly refreshed – without a great cost to the mine.

A second part of the ACARP-funded project will look at developing a way for fool-proof changeover between SCSRs and CABA.

During the emergency tests it was found while underground workers were doing the changeover they sometimes took a side breath.

If this happened in a real emergency environment with high concentrates of carbon monoxide in the air it could prove fatal.

Simtars wants to develop a process to ensure the changeover takes place in an informed environment.