New technology and practice of dust pollution control with foam jet in underground mines

Abstract

Foam is used as an efficient means of dust suppression in underground coal mines. The poor performance of conventional adding device of foaming agent restricts its wide application. The objective of this study is to propose and investigate a new parallel jet adding device (PJAD). Experimental results show that PJAD requires a greater water flow to produce negative pressure than the single stage jet adding device (SJAD) and is harder to generate cavitation. PJAD consumes a less pressure loss than SJAD and realizes any adding proportion below 1%, which is especially suitable for precision addition of foaming agent. A foaming system used for dust suppression is put forward with PJAD adding foaming agent. Field application indicates that foam achieves a far better dust suppression effect than the roadheader water spraying, and the foam cost is significantly reduced due to the low adding proportion of foaming agent. The marked dust suppression effect makes us believe that the proposed PJAD will greatly promote the large-scale application of foam technology used for dust suppression in underground coal mines.

Keywords:

• Jet
• cavitation
• pressure loss
• foam
• dust suppression

Acknowledgments

Thanks go to Prof. Shahamat U. Khan and anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and constructive suggestions.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51704299), the Program of Beijing-funded Plan for Talents (2017000020124G011), Open Research Project of the State Key Laboratory of Coal Resources and Safe Mining (China University of Mining and Technology) (SKLCRSM17KFA10), Open Research Project of state Key Laboratory Cultivation Base for Gas Geology and Gas Control (Henan Polytechnic University) (WS2018A03), Opening Funds of State Key Laboratory of Fire Science (HZ2018-KF08), and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2017QZ01).