Underground mine ventilation curtain or barrier

Abstract

A mine ventilation curtain (1, 20) is provided comprising, in the operative condition, a generally upright curtain or barrier extending from a foot wall (4) in an underground mine to an overhanging hanging wall (5, 25). The curtain has a foot wall compartment (3, 22) of a flexible sheet material with the footwall compartment being operatively filled with a suitable optionally settable fluent material (13, 27) such that the lower edge of the curtain or barrier substantially adopts an undulating shape of the adjacent foot wall. The fluent material is selected from a suitably heavy liquid and an optionally settable slurry of grout or backfill material. The mine ventilation curtain may be a flexible ventilation curtain (2) extending upwards from the foot wall compartment (3) and having its uppermost edge held in close association with the hanging wall. Alternatively, the mine ventilation curtain may be a generally rigid ventilation barrier (20) in the form of longitudinal segments each of which comprises a series of optionally interconnected superjacent compartments (22, 23, 24) extending from the footwall to the hanging wall with the uppermost compartment (24) adopting an undulating shape of the adjacent hanging wall.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.