The GAG engine formed part of the Queensland Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Energy’s level one emergency exercise, held to assess the mine’s reaction and procedures to a mine emergency.

The QMRS were called in by the mine to extinguish a fake fire underground. The GAG team was required to demonstrate they were able to react to a call in, fire up the engine and successfully inert the mine atmosphere.

The jet engine technology makes the underground mine atmosphere inert by eliminating oxygen through a release of carbon dioxide and water vapor into the mine. It has been used to fight mine fires and create inert mine atmospheres in Australia since 1999 and was first used at Blair Athol Mine in Queensland.

GAG co-ordinator and QMRS operations manager Marek Romanski said although he had to wait on the final assessment report from the department, he was happy with his team’s performance.

“When employing the GAG at the mine sites currently there are some issues in relation to the docking facilities, but QMRS is working on standardising the setup to avoid time wasting in the future,” said Romanski.

He said although the technology had been used in Queensland for five years, the engine still generated a lot of interest on the day with people wanting to see how the engine actually worked.

Interest has also been generated in New South Wales, where Romanski was invited to present a paper at Wollongong University a month ago. QMRS recently took the GAG engine into New South Wales at Christmas, to respond to the underground fire at Gympie Gold’s Southland mine.

Romanski took over the GAG co-ordinator position from Ian Houlison late last year, when Houlison joined Micon Mining in the USA when the company purchased a jet engine from Poland. Romanski has extensive underground experience, working in coal mines in Poland and in Australia where he worked in underground coal mines to a relief mine manager level.

“The core of the GAG Response Unit is the trained operators who responded to the emergency at Southland Colliery, giving up the family time at Christmas. Having such a dedicated team working with you makes the job much easier,” Romanski said.