Study of the Operational Safety of an Electrical Installation with a View to Improving Its Architecture (The Case of the Suction Fans at the Kansoko Mine)

The quality of electrical power has become a very important aspect in industry today, in that critical equipment that operates 24 hours a day needs an uninterrupted supply, free from any impurities. This is the case for the ventilation fans used in underground mines around the world. A malfunction, stoppage or breakdown would automatically put the lives of the miners at risk. This article focuses on the operational safety of the electrical circuit for the fans at the Kansoko mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo and proposes an improvement to the existing circuit. A detailed approach to the methodology of operational safety is given, followed by an overview of the installation of the existing circuit. We then present our study on the operational safety of this installation based on the FMECA method and use the Fault Tree professional tool to simulate the circuit to understand its behavior in the event of any failure.