Other papers will be presented at the conference from several leading scientist and experts who participated in the Pike River mine recovery task force, conference chairman Naj Aziz told ILN.

Darren Brady, Geoff Nugent, Trevor Watt and Seamus Devlin will deal with the issues of planning for mine re-entry, and the “window of opportunity” of mine rescue.

“There are more than 50 papers to be presented over the two day conference to be held at University of Wollongong on February 16 and 17,” Aziz said. “Topics covered include papers on surface mining, and papers on underground mining ground control, strata management, and mine safety in general.”

Minova’s Verne Mutton will present the paper on the design and construction of water holding bulkheads at Xstrata’s Oaky No 1 mine in Queensland.

Papers on automated bolt and meshing on a continuous miner and automated installation of monorail for roadway development will be presented by the University of Wollongong automation research team of Stephan Van Duin and his colleagues.

There are seven papers on mine gas drainage and outburst control.

A representative from CSIRO will discuss the estimation of fugitive emissions from surface mining, and gas movement in micro fractures of coal.

Frank Hungerford and his colleagues from the University of Wollongong will provide the latest directional control and effects on longhole directional drilling.

A new rapid gas content measurement system using a portable gas analyser will be presented by a representative from Queensland University.

On dust control, there will be a paper on the experiences of IOM foam respirable sampler use in coal, metal and diamond mines to be presented by Anglo American Metallurgical coal, and new testing methods for respirable and inhalable dust on longwalls by representatives from the University of Wollongong.

Director of the University of Queensland’s spontaneous combustion testing laboratory Basil Beamish will be focusing on sponcom while Ting Ren and his colleagues from the University of Wollongong Mining group will be presenting several papers on mine gas science.

On rock bolting, there will be presentations on the latest on stress corrosion cracking from a team of researchers from the UNSW school of mines and Jennmar Australia.

Aziz and his colleagues from the University of Wollongong will address the issues related to rockbolt failure mores and mechanics.

The list of technical papers has been released and uploaded at the conference website http://www.coalconference.net.au.