Continuous Improvement of the Return Air Raise Silencer System at Totten Mine
Enrique Acuna, BBE Consulting Canada; Andrew Dobson, HGC Engineering
The Totten Mine return air raise was designed with two parallel fans equipped with silencers to reduce the noise emitted from the outlets into the environment. As a result of maintenance challenges and diminishing noise reduction benefit over time, the silencing system needed to be upgraded to meet the regulatory noise limits enforced by the Province of Ontario. The first system re-design occurred in 2016 with results presented in 2017 (Dobson and Acuña 2017). The second phase of design has now been completed which will allow the fans to reach the upper limit of their capacity. The most recent model includes a new silencer baffle design and a new layout that will allow doubling the length of the silencer system currently in place. This paper presents the performance of the 2016 silencing system installed on the return air fans at Totten Mine, the alternatives considered for improving silencing performance and provides a discussion of the positive results achieved using acoustic measurement data collected on several occasions. An economic assessment is also presented, to compare the costing associated with the generations of noise control scenarios over time.
