Abstract

The phenomenon of combustible dust explosions is present within many industries. Tests for explosibility of dust clouds per ASTM E1226 use a 20 L explosive chamber that places the combustible dust directly below the dispersion nozzle which generates a thorough mixture for testing purposes. However, in the underground coal mining industry, there are a number of geologic, mining, and regulatory factors that change the deposition scheme of combustible coal dust. This causes the atmosphere of a coal mine to have a variable rock dust-coal dust mixture at the time of ignition. To investigate the impact of this variable atmosphere, a series of lean explosibility tests were conducted on a sample of Pittsburgh Pulverized coal dust. These explosibility tests were conducted in a 38 L chamber with a 5 kJ Sobbe igniter. The 38 L chamber generates a variable air-dust mixture prior to ignition. The test results indicate that the 38 L chamber experiences reduced explosive pressures, and lower explosibility index values when compared to the 20 L chamber.

Department(s)

Mining Engineering

Keywords and Phrases

Coal; Coal industry; Coal mines; Explosions; Explosives; Ignition; Mine dust; Mixtures; Coal mining; Combustible dust; Dust explosion; Explosibility; Explosibility index; Pulverized coals; Regulatory factors; Underground coal mining; Coal dust; Dust explosion; Explosibility testing

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

2095-2686; 2589-062X

Document Type

Article - Journal

Document Version

Final Version

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2018 China University of Mining and Technology, All rights reserved.

Creative Commons Licensing

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Publication Date

01 Nov 2018

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