A new facility fitted with cutting-edge technol-ogy allowing to tackle fugitive methane emissions will be set up at South32’s Illawarra coal mine owing to a A$15 million (US$10.5 mil-lion) grant provided by the government of Australia’s New South Wales state.
Paul Tool, the state’s Deputy Premier and Minister responsible for Resources, has announced funding to develop a pilot Ventilation Air Methane (VAM) abatement project that will be employed to demon-strate the effectiveness of this technology for the coal industry.
“After a competitive Expression of Interest process, I’m pleased to confirm South32 as the successful tenderer to deliver a world leading, commercial scale ventilation air emissions abatement facility,” Toole said, as quoted in a statement. “The NSW mining industry is commit-ted to reducing fugitive emissions from coal mining, which account for about 8.9 per cent of our state’s greenhouse gas emissions, with most of those fugitive emissions coming in the form of VAM.”