Numerical study on dust suppression and cooling performance of an external spray system in load-haul-dump vehicles

• Main Authors: Chen Li, Haoyu Zhang, Mengya Li, Cong Zhang, Wenhao Wang, Ningning Zhang, Shuo Yuan, Wenyu Yang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2021-10-01
• Series: Case Studies in Thermal Engineering
• Subjects: Thermal environment; Numerical simulations; External spray system; Dust suppression; Cooling effect; Development heading
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214157X21004950

Sprayed dust suppression techniques are widely used to reduce the dust concentration in mines, and evaporative cooling by water spray is increasingly used as an approach to enhance thermal comfort in built environments. In mines, the roadway under excavation, which is known as the development heading, has not yet been connected to through ventilation. Auxiliary ventilation is the most important but also the most difficult to achieve in this area. Operators face the dual threat of dust and high temperatures in the area, in particular at the end of the heading, that is, at the heading face. To improve the working environment in this area, the present study improved the load-haul-dump vehicle and installed an external spray system on the bucket of the vehicle. To verify the cooling and dust suppression effect of the system, a computational fluid dynamics simulation was adopted to simulate the velocity and temperature fields of the airflow and the dynamic distributions of the water droplets using the Euler–Lagrange approach. The study shows that the water droplets can completely cover the dust-producing area, and the water temperature of the spray system can significantly affect the temperature distribution on the airflow in the development heading.