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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.

Mine fires mainly arise from spontaneous combustion of coal seams and are a global issue that has attracted increasing public attention. Particularly in china, the closure of coal workfaces because of spontaneous combustion has contributed to substantial economic loss. To reduce the occurrence of mine fires, the spontaneous coal combustion underground needs to be studied. In this paper, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model was developed for coal spontaneous combustion under goaf gas drainage conditions. The CFD model was used to simulate the distribution of oxygen in the goaf at the workface in a fully mechanized cave mine. The goaf was treated as an anisotropic medium, and the effects of methane drainage and oxygen consumption on spontaneous combustion were considered. The simulation results matched observational data from a field study, which indicates CFD simulation is suitable for research on the distribution of oxygen in coalmines. The results also indicated that near the workface spontaneous combustion was more likely to take place in the upper part of the goaf than near the bottom, while further from workface the risk of spontaneous combustion was greater in the lower part of the goaf. These results can be used to develop firefighting approaches for coalmines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coal dust seriously threatens the safety and occupational health of coal mines. Numerical simulation research on the infrared radiation characteristics of diffused coal dust is carried out in fully mechanized working faces based on the optical monitoring problem of dust particles in mine atmospheric environments. The CFD method is applied to obtain the law of dust transport and distribution. Combined with Mie scattering model, the infrared radiation change characteristics and spectral selection of diffused coal dust particles are simulated and analyzed along the working face. The comparison results show the following: the attenuation and scattering characteristics of mine dust particles system are first enhanced, and then they weaken as the distance from dust source increases. The infrared attenuation of mine dust at the center of the vertical cross-section is generally greater than that at the roof and floor in the same location. The dispersion of mine dust directly determines the attenuation contribution of respirable dust to total dust. Moreover, the infrared absorption effect of functional groups in coal causes the infrared attenuation effect of coal dust to have obvious optical selectivity along the roadway, the existing optical “window.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel composite foam material for blocking air leakage in coal mine was developed. In order to examine the performance of the new composite foam, the foaming property, mechanical property, microstructure, thermal stability, and flame resistance of the composite foams, polyurethane foams, phenolic foams, and urea-formaldehyde foams were investigated. The results show that the composite foam had the biggest compressive strength, thermal stability, and flame resistance. Moreover, composite foam had the lowest foaming temperature and shrinkage, indicating that it had small risk in causing spontaneous combustion of coal, and it exhibited good air leakage blocking effect. Field application showed that composite foam could effectively block air leakage in goaf. Thus, composite foam materials were considered to be the potential candidates for blocking air leakage in coal mines to prevent spontaneous combustion of coal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To solve the problem of high dust concentration caused by rock tunnel excavation, in view of the characteristics of dust produced and analyzing the processes of roadheader cutting rock, the paper used Fluent software to carry on numerical simulation of dust movement and analyse the dust characteristics of motion and concentration distribution. Simultaneously, this paper designed the foam dust suppression system applied to fully mechanize large cross-section rock tunnel excavation on the principle of foam dust suppression, and put it into application at the driving face of the north main haulage roadway in Zhuxianzhuang Coal Mine, Huaibei Mining Co., Ltd. The results show that the dust concentration on the exhaust section of the driving face, reaches a maximum at the leeward side of dust source. Foam making by the foam dust suppression system can enclose roadheader's cutting head and cover palisades, reaching the results of wetting rock, reducing dust content, depressing the generation of dust and blocking the spreading alleyway. The average dust-settling effect is 86. 2% and 84. 4% for the total dust and respirable dust, and the effect is 3. 6 and 4. 6 times comparing with water spray, achieving a good effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]