Minimizing DPM Pollution in an Underground Mine by Optimizing Auxiliary Ventilation Systems using CFD
Abstract
Diesel particulate matter (DPM) is a carcinogen to humans. Underground miners have the potential to expose to higher DPM concentrations since the working environment is confined. To address the DPM pollution issues and optimize the auxiliary ventilation system, a development face in an underground mine in Western Australia was taken as the physical model and the computational fluid dynamics was used to analyse the airflow characteristics and DPM concentration distributions in the development face. Then, the obtained simulation results were validated with the onsite measurement data. The DPM concentration distributions under 3 scenarios, with different duct lengths, were further compared with the AIOH standard for DPM (0.1 mg/m3). The results found that the current auxiliary ventilation system was not able to reduce the DPM concentration effectively, and the ventilation system with a duct length 5 m longer than the actual duct length provided a better DPM dilution performance. The finding of this paper is helpful for effective DPM control and auxiliary ventilation design for the further mining activities.
Recommended Citation
P. Chang et al., "Minimizing DPM Pollution in an Underground Mine by Optimizing Auxiliary Ventilation Systems using CFD," Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology, vol. 87, pp. 112 - 121, Elsevier, May 2019.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tust.2019.02.014
Department(s)
Mining Engineering
Keywords and Phrases
Air; Computational fluid dynamics; Ducts; Lagrange multipliers; Pollution; Airflow characteristics; Auxiliary ventilation; Concentration distributions; Diesel particulate matters; Eulerian-Lagrangian method; On-site measurement; Underground mines; Working environment; Ventilation; Airflow; Computational fluid dynamics; Concentration (composition); Diesel; Eulerian analysis; Mine; Optimization; Particulate matter; Ventilation; Australia; Western Australia
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
0886-7798
Document Type
Article - Journal
Document Version
Citation
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2019 Elsevier, All rights reserved.
Publication Date
01 May 2019
Comments
This research project is supported by the Independent Research Projects of State Key Laboratory of Coal Resources and Safe Mining , CUMT (SKLCRSM15KF01), the Minerals Research Institute of Western Australia (M495), the Mining Education Australia Collaborative Research Grant Scheme (2018), and the computation resources provided by the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre with funding from the Australian Government and the Government of Western Australia.