GENERAL BUDGET CONSIDERATIONS

Mr. YATES. Well, that is kind of obvious, you are engaged in some very constructive work. Mr. Murphy, you are going to give us a document showing us what will happen if you are required to go forward with your budget. The one you are asking us to approve, right?

Mr. MURPHY. Yes, sir.

Mr. YATES. You are also going to show us how that budget will slow down, extend or possibly eliminate research in certain necessary items, right?

Mr. MURPHY. We can show you what would be deferred or eliminated, yes.

Mr. YATES. All right.

Mr. MURPHY. Did you want to see the types of activities that are ongoing with the additional funding provided by the Congress this year?

Mr. YATES. Sure. I am convinced already. Are there any other persuasive presentations you want to give to me that might win you more money?

Mr. HORTON. That is not my point in being here, Mr. Chairman. My point is to discuss the budget. It is your duty to judge what I have to say.

Mr. YATES. That is right. You propose and we dispose. If you don't propose, there is very little disposing that we can do. Mr. Murphy is proposing. I think we will probably dispose. Are there other areas of importance in the Bureau of Mines that I should be looking at?

Mr. HORTON. I consider all the areas important.

Mr. YATES. Mr. Murphy, I can see I am not going to get anywhere with Mr. Horton.

Mr. HORTON. I would like to add a little bit.

Mr. YATES. Okay.

Mr. HORTON. I don't see any additional funding.

Mr. YATES. Of course, you don't, but I am just tearing it out of

you.

Mr. HORTON. Congress, in part to my disappointment, has shown high interest in health and safety and mining technology, less so in the minerals and materials research area and less so in minerals information and analysis.

Mr. YATES. They are obviously not as dramatic as Mr. Murphy's presentation.

Mr. HORTON. That is one reason they are not quite as dramatic. Most of the inquiries we get from Congress are questions regarding economics, et cetera, and relate to the facts. Not many of them require us to look at research, but at our data analysis.

Mr. YATES. Are you saying with your data analysis, you won't be able to answer questions Congress addresses to you?

Mr. HORTON. No, sir, the budget is adequate for that.

Mr. YATES. You are backing into something, and I am not exactly sure what it is.

Mr. HORTON. Me neither. We propose decreases and increases alike that come to Congress' attention. I would encourage you to look at all activities within the Bureau.

Mr. YATES. Congress will look at all activities within the Bureau. I assume OMB did, too.

Mr. HORTON. Yes, sir.

CLOSING AVONDALE

Mr. YATES. What is the effect of closing Avondale? Will that hurt you or hurt anything, or is it something that should have been closed years ago?

Mr. HORTON. No, it has not hurt me and I look forward to doing it. The principal reason for looking at closing Avondale is because of the past reduction in both my request and in appropriations. We are getting somewhat thinner in all the research centers, and there comes a question, then, of the effective use of the research labs and the space and how thin do you want to get in all of them? And it is about time, across-the-board reductions budgetwise, staffwise at research centers are not appropriate any longer. We should look at closing one.

Mr. YATES. Okay, Mr. Murphy.

FIRE SUPPRESSION

Mr. MURPHY. We just discussed mine explosions, and I have another one-minute video tape that shows how to deal with those types of problems. We see here a machine mounted ignition suppression system I have had the pleasure of showing some of your colleagues in the past.

[Recess.]

[Video presentation.]

Mr. MURPHY. Basically, it is intended to address mine explosions, and again these experiments were conducted at our Lake Lynn Laboratory. This system consists of some cannisters which have been mounted on top of a continuous miner. In a final version, they would be installed in the machine. This is a schematic; it involves some detectors that can sense the fire and put it out in about 80 thousandths of a second. Here we see a high-speed picture in real time; if you were sitting on a continuous miner, that is what you would see.

Now this scene is repeated again, and this flash, sir, is not the ignition source, but a flash bulb that tells us the ignition took place at that time. You can see the fire coming around the head of the continuous miner. It takes a few seconds at this slow speed for it to develop, and then it comes very rapidly at you or I, as the machine operator. This is the close up localized methane explosion I showed you in the earlier video tape.

Now we are going to repeat the same experiment. This is the continuous miner again, except we are going to have the suppression system activated, and we will see it first in real time. All you see is a flash and a cloud of dust because the dust is a suppressing powder. This is a repeat of it, and you can already see that the detectors have detected the fire and are putting the suppression powder in the air, and it does successfully suppress

Mr. YATES. How does it do that, cutting off oxygen?

Mr. MURPHY. Basically, it is a chemical reaction. It involves a dry powder extinguishing agent, as well as a gaseous extinguishing

agent which mixes together, and in about 80-thousandths of a second will accomplish that objective.

We are now looking at some fine tuning arrangements of this system before we go to equipment manufacturers in terms of them building it into the machine.

COAL DUST GENERATION ANALYSIS

Now relative to your question about the specific areas where there was additional funds added by the Congress, we have discussed the mineral institutes, particularly the generic centers. Figure 5-B addresses one project, specifically the development of computer analysis of coal dust generation. And the important thing to remember, sir, is that it is a team effort with a lot of players, and it is basically being managed by Bureau personnel.

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Mr. MURPHY. Some of the fundamental research is being done by the generic centers in conjunction with in-house studies, as well as participation with the industry. What we expect to get out of this project, and there are some preliminary results that are already very encouraging, is improved machine design relative to cutting and also the mine inspectors having additional data relative to compliance.

WILBERG MINE FIRE

In the other areas, where there were supplemental funds provided, one, of course, relates to the outgrowth of the Wilberg mine fire. The upper left-hand graphic of Figure 6-B, shows a picture of some smoke coming from the mine portals during the fire. There are a variety of things ongoing as a result of that fire. Some include some large-scale experiments looking at the effectiveness of different suppressing agents that have been suggested by some of the mine rescue people at Wilberg to be quite effective.

The upper right picture of Figure 6-B shows a 20-ton mine fire being conducted in our experimental mine where we are looking at the effectiveness of suppressive A and B, et cetera. In addition to that, we have done work on the use of specialized detectors, and I will describe that in a moment on another figure. In the lower left of Figure 6-B is a submicron particulate analyzer now being commercialized by Pyott Boone and is a very exciting device as it relates to early fire detection. The center graphic of Figure 6-B relates to some of the postdisaster support work as it relates to the Wilberg fire and specifically the evaluation of the self-rescue devices that were recovered from Wilberg.

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