화학공학소재연구정보센터
Process Safety and Environmental Protection, Vol.129, 230-237, 2019
Investigation on the design of atomization device for coal dust suppression in underground roadways
During mining operations, large amounts of coal dust escape from the heading faces. This dust presents a serious hazard to the health and safety of workers in the excavation roadways. In this study, a device was designed to capture the escaped dust in a timely way. The device was suitable for heading with forced ventilation and it could generate a fog layer with a certain thickness through the twice atomization process. The fog layer could cover the entire roadway section to filter and remove the coal dust escaping from the heading face. The performance of the proposed device was experimentally studied under different working conditions. The experimental results showed that, with the increasing of the water pressure (P-w), the particle sizes of droplets decreased while the coverage radius increased and its increasing rate gradually decelerated. Meanwhile, as the air pressure (P-a) increased, the coverage radius displayed an upward trend, and the particle sizes of the droplets decreased gradually. In this study, four different water-air pressure ranges were tested to cope with the different field conditions. Then, the proposed device and obtained test results were applied at Zhangcun Coal Mine in China. The application results indicated that the total and respirable dust suppression efficiency of the device has increased 24.8% and 43%, respectively, compared to the traditional water curtain. Also, the device was estimated to have saved approximately 25% in water consumption when compared with the water curtain method. Therefore, it is believed that the new atomization device would be ideal for replacing traditional water curtains for the suppression of hazardous dust particles in underground coal mines. (C) 2019 Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.