Reducing dust exposure through real time data

Peabody is a leading coal producer, serving customers in 25 countries and six continents. It provides essential products to fuel base load electricity for emerging and developed countries.
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Learn how Peabody partnered with Applied Particle Technology to improve real-time worker health and safety.

About the site

Peabody partnered with Applied Particle Technology for their El Segundo mine. Based in Grants, New Mexico, Peabody's El Segundo mine yielded 5.4 million tons of coal in 2019 Peabody's resolute vision is to operate safe, incident-free, healthy workplaces. Safety is Peabody's first value and is deeply integrated into all business areas, demonstrating our unwavering dedication to eliminating all workplace incidents and illnesses.

Additional information about Peabody's mining practice:

‍Mine type: Surface

Location: Northwest New Mexico, USA

Coal type: Thermal

Mining Method: Dragline, dozer, costing, truck, shovel

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Why Peabody needed APT

Peabody's umbrella management system is the primary framework for focusing on three critical areas of understanding exposure risks.
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Fundamentally, the aim is to understand what people are exposed to, what contaminants they're exposed to, and to what level they're exposed to, along with how damaging that can be over time.
Traditionally, dust is monitored through a time-weighted average over the entire shift.

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APT found ways to pinpoint when the higher exposures occur within the shift, allowing for a more targeted approach around those higher-risk activities. Therefore, APT eliminates the task or dust source or provides protection when people need it.

Monitoring as a service

Looking for a scalable and effective solution, Peabody turned to APT's wireless sensor networks to gather more insights. APT's monitoring platform workflows allow efficient and effective intervention to reduce risk and liability.

Results since using APT

Peabody deployed APT monitors across various environments, including dozers, high-wall drills, plant operators, and crushing equipment.

APT's platform provides real-time alerts to notify people in real-time that they are in a highly dusty environment.

Cabin exposures

Peabody deployed APT monitors across various cabin environments to identify potential exposure risks.

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Cabins are resealed periodically as part of scheduled maintenance; however, more than a fixed schedule may be required since a cabin's seal integrity may degrade before the next scheduled maintenance.
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APT's monitors verified which cabins were well sealed and had a higher exposure risk. Furthermore, APT's monitors helped identify when these exposures were occurring and the root causes of these exposures.

How APT compares to other methods

Conventional gravimetric methods require significant time and effort, and a single data point can take weeks. This method needs to include all the other days of exposure risks. APT can help dramatically simplify this process through real-time monitoring.

Through APT's monitoring platform, facilities can fix risks in days instead of weeks.