Numerical investigation on the spraying and explosibility characteristics of coal dust

Abstract

This paper utilises FLUENT software to simulate the spraying and explosion of coal dust in a spherical explosion chamber. The influence of particle size on coal dust spraying is analysed. Explosion easily develops for small particle sizes under the same conditions of coal dust concentration and ignition temperature. For large-size coal dust particles, the speeds of release and transmission reduce dramatically due to lack of oxygen inside. Explosion is very difficult to develop in such conditions. Coal dusts with smaller particle size distribute uniformly in the chamber, whereas larger particles concentrate in parts of the chamber. The influence of coal dust concentration, ignition temperature and particle size on the pressure of coal dust explosion is also studied. The results show that, when ignition temperature is less than a certain value, the maximum pressure increases rapidly with the growth of ignition temperature. As ignition temperature is larger than the value, the change of the maximum pressure is small. The maximum explosion pressure increases first and then decreases with the increase of coal dust concentration. Because the inside of large size particles burn only partially due to lack of oxygen and slow combustion heat release and transfer, the decrease of the maximum explosion pressure is proportional with the increase of particle size.

Keywords:

• coal dust
• explosion
• numerical simulation

Additional information

Funding

Funding. This research is supported by the Specialised Research Foundation for the Doctoral Programme of Higher Education of China under [grant number 20121101110004]; Beijing Natural Science Foundation [grant number 8132034]; and the Foundation of State Key Laboratory of Explosion Science and Technology [grant number ZDKT11–01].