Numerical study of coal dust behaviors and experimental investigation on coal dust suppression efficiency of surfactant solution by using wind tunnel tests

ABSTRACT

Coal dust is one of the most serious hazards on mine sites. Water spray with surfactant added is an effective way to control the coal dust. In this study, wind tunnel experiments were designed to evaluate the surfactant on coal dust suppression efficiency. A CFD modeling was first constructed in to investigate the coal dust particles movement characteristics, and the stimulation results were provided for the wind tunnel design. The CFD results indicated that the location of the nozzle placement and the time for the water spraying start time. The coal dust suppression efficiency was then evaluated in the presence of different surfactants. The experiment results suggest that the anionic and non-ionic surfactants are helpful to improve the suppression efficiency while the cationic surfactant failed to increase it. For the SDBS at various concentrations, the highest suppression efficiency is achieved when at 0.20%. Compared with the larger coal dust particles, the finer ones are more difficult to capture for both water and SDBS surfactant solution. The results also demonstrate the potential application of this surfactant on coal mine industries.

KEYWORDS:

• Computational fluid dynamics
• Coal dust suppression
• Surfactant
• Wind tunnel test

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ping Chang

Ping Chang is a current PhD candidate at Curtin University. Hisresearch interests include mine ventilation, computer fluid dynamics, gas control and ultrafine particle control in underground mines. He is especially expertisting in underground mine ventilation and health issues caused by diesel particulate matter (DPM) in underground mines. He uses the CFD method to study the diesel particulate matter dispersion and concentration distributions in underground mines and provide effective control approaches on DPM based on the simulation results.

Yinping Chen

Yinping Chen finished her bachelor and master degree in Mining Engineering in University of Science and Technology, Beijing, China. Her PhD. research interest includes suppressing coal dust in underground coal mines by using chemicals. She has published several papers on this topic.

Guang Xu

Guang Xu earned his B.S. and completed the course work toward a master’s degree at China University of Mining and Technology, and Ph. D. at Virginia Tech, all in Mining Engineering. He also accomplished two education certificates: the Future Professoriate Graduate Certificate and the Engineering Education Graduate Certificate, offered by Virginia Tech. He worked at Virginia Tech as a postdoctoral researcher before came to Western Australian School of Mines as an associate lecturer. Dr. Xu has expertise in mine ventilation and safety, coal bed methane, gas chromatography (GC), computational fluid dynamics, the use of tracer gases for underground mine research, sustainable mining, and computational programming to solve mining problems. He has published several peer reviewed papers, reviewed several papers for mining related journals and conferences, and served on the administration committee of the high performance computer (HPC) in the mining department at Virginia Tech.

Jinxin Huang

Jinxin Huang obtained his master degree from China University of Mining and Technology (Beijing)  in 2016.  He is now a PhD candidate in Curtin University studying mining engineering.  His research interests include coalbed methane stimulation,  microwave heating and mine ventilation.

Apurna Ghosh

Ghosh has done his Graduation from Bengal Engineering College (Calcutta University) in the year 1993, Masters from Indian School of Mines in 1999 and Doctors from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur in 2004. Dr. Ghosh is actively involved in teaching and research for more than one decade in various Indian Universities. He has joined WASM in 2013. His area of research interest is Mine Safety management which includes Risk Assessment of different mine hazards, Behavioural Safety and Injury Epidemiology. His various activities included extensive field investigations and statistical analysis of injury occurrence data.  He has knowledge in statistical modeling and its application.  He has also written 18 numbers of technical papers of International standards which are the outcomes of his research work. He has also keen interest on Geoinformatics which includes generation of DEM for selection of suitable aquifer recharge sites and monitoring of mining induced land subsidence.

Wei Victor Liu

Wei Victor Liu is an assistant professor of the University of Alberta. His research interests are centered on the areas of cement-based materials (e.g.,shotcrete and grout) and geothermal modeling. In addition, he has extended interests in the control of mine dust at surface mining. In these areas, all graduate students have been guaranteed research projects with clear scopes and objectives.