「炭酸ガス炭鉱」の提案

将来の完全機械化炭鉱のために

抄録

In this paper the author presents an idea of “the coal mine in CO₂ atmosphere” and considers someproblems to realize this idea.
The mine safety is one of the most important problems in coal mine from the view point of humanityas well as engineering. Up to the present, all of the efforts to protect the mine explosion have been attemptedand succeeded only to minimized the probability of mine explosion.
So long as there are oxygen, fire damp and some sources of fire, such as spontaneous combustielectric spark, heat of friction, and so on, the probability of mine explosion could be minimized to beon I y a fraction of many thousands but not to be zero. In order to make this probability zero, there isthe only way to reduce either one of above three factors of mine explosion.
Since it is impossible to reduce fire damp and some source of fire, we need to reduce oxygen orair. This is the reason why the author proposes to replace the mine air by CO₂, and realize “the coalmine in CO₂ atmosphere.”
In the coal mine in CO₂ atmosphere, the applications of all equipments and installations are permittedwithout explosion protective devices. This would accelerate the automation and mechanization ofcoal mine operations, in turn the automation and mechanization would accelerate the realization of thecoal mine in CO₂ atmosphere.
There would be, of cource, many problems and difficulties to be solved in the way to realize thecoal mine in CO₂ atmosphere. Some of these problems to be researched are as follows;(1) the heat exchange or cooling of CO₂ atmosphere,
(2) the improvement of the capacity of oxygen mask,
(3) the use of vapour pressure of CO₂ as the power source of rock drills and coal picks,
(4) the consumption and supply of CO₂, and
(5) the communications between miners.
But these problems seem to be not so difficult that we are disouraged to realize the coal mine in CO₂atmosphere.