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Research, Development and Application of Dust Suppression Technology

Conference Paper · February 2018

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 University of Wollongong
Research Online
Coal Operators' Conference Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences

2018

Research, Development and Application of Dust

Suppression Technology
Jon Roberts
University of Wollongong

Peter Wypych
University of Wollongong

Publication Details
Jon Roberts and Peter Wypych, Research, Development and Application of Dust Suppression Technology, Proceedings of the 18th
Coal Operators' Conference, Mining Engineering, University of Wollongong, 319-328.

Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library:
[email protected]
 2018 Coal Operators Conference

RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT AND

APPLICATION OF DUST SUPPRESSION
TECHNOLOGY
Jon Roberts 1 and Peter Wypych 2
ABSTRACT: The coal industry faces significant challenges in the control of dust to meet
emissions regulations and goals as well as ensuring sustainable operations. This paper
describes some of the different techniques and innovative technologies that are being
developed and implemented to improve the suppression of airborne dust, specifically through
the use of high-energy micro-mist sprays. The utilisation of CFD modelling and simulation is
identified and described as a key enabling technology for an improvement in dust
suppression technology both from a level of understanding of the source and flow of dust
emissions and for the development of new systems that can be used in the coal industry.
CFD modelling is shown to be effective for modelling both spray dispersion and cross-wind
effects allowing designers to develop high-efficiency dust suppression systems with a greatly
improved level of confidence when compared to traditional techniques. New high-energy
micro-mist technology is also outlined as a key element in developing high-efficiency dust
suppression systems. Experimental results and industry applications are presented to
demonstrate the significant improvements that can be achieved in suppressing or reducing
airborne dust emissions.

INTRODUCTION

In the coal industry, dust emissions are an increasingly troublesome issue that has seen very
little improvement achieved for many years. In Australia, industry emissions of particulate
matter less than 10 microns in size has increased from 530 million kilograms in 2009/2010 to
920 million kilograms in 2013/2014, representing a significant and increasing problem
(Australian Government - Department of the Environment, 2014). Issues associated with
excess dust emissions include health implications, environmental pollution, material loss, and
equipment deterioration due to the adverse operating environment. Worker morale and
productivity can also be negatively affected by excess workplace dust, and of course, there is
the important need to comply with increasingly stringent regulations primarily from a pollution
and health perspective. These issues vary with dust properties and concentration, which is
directly related to the quantity of material handled and the control methods implemented. One
of the primary control methods implemented today consists of water sprays designed to wet
material as a way of limiting dust release, however, the effectiveness of this method is limited
and varies from application to application. Many of these systems also suffer from high
consumption of valuable clean water. Improved design methods in combination with high
energy micro mist nozzles will be presented in this paper as a means of developing much
higher efficiency dust control systems with lower rates of water consumption and decreased
costs compared to the water spray systems commonly in use today.

In the coal industry, there are two specific operational areas that have been identified as
troublesome for the control of dust (among many others); run-of-mine (ROM) dump hoppers
and stockpile stackers. These operations can generate relatively large quantities of dust in
conditions, which can be described as challenging at best. The outdoor nature of these
operations means that they are particularly susceptible to wind disturbances and the high
drop heights that are present result in the development of fast moving and “dense” dust
clouds. To achieve a notable improvement in the control of dust in these areas it is necessary
that new technologies be developed, and improved design techniques established. Research
conducted at the University of Wollongong has identified two enabling technologies that can

1
PhD Candidate, University of Wollongong, Wollongong NSW 2522. Email: [email protected]
2
Professor, University of Wollongong, Wollongong NSW 2522. Email: [email protected]

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result in this improvement; the application of high energy micro mist sprays and the use of
computer-aided engineering (CAE) techniques, specifically Computational Fluid Dynamics
(CFD).

OPTIMISING DUST CAPTURE EFFICIENCY

To optimise the efficiency of a dust control/suppression system the key influencing variables
must first be identified. Generally, the first component selected in the design of a dust
suppression system is the nozzle type which is selected based on Droplet Size Distribution
(DSD), spray penetration, mist density, spray angle, and droplet velocity. These are all a
function of spray nozzle design and input conditions (e.g. water pressure). The aspect of a
nozzle’s performance most important to its effectiveness at capturing dust is droplet size. The
reason for this is related to Stokes’ law, which describes the frictional force or drag forces that
are exerted on a spherical object moving in a viscous fluid. As both a droplet and a dust
particle travel through the air they will impart a force on the air which will alter their motion
and effect their interactions with each other. Figure 1 depicts this interaction. If a very small
object is travelling towards a larger object, the fluid flowing around the large object will impart
a force on the small object causing it to become entrained in the disturbed air and travel
around the object rather than impacting with it. The greater the difference in size the more
pronounced this effect will be and as such the less likely it is that impact will occur. Based on
this explanation it can be concluded that to maximise the potential of dust capture by water
droplet it is most important to have droplets of similar size to the dust particles being
captured. Furthermore, as well as having droplets of similar size, it is also necessary to have
droplet concentration or mist density greater than the concentrations of dust in the air such
that all the dust can be captured.

Figure 1: Particle-droplet interaction

Given this knowledge, it is now possible to analyse the performance of systems currently in
use. There are two forms of spraying systems that are commonly used for dust suppression;
systems using water only sprays generally at relatively low pressures producing a coarse
droplet spray, or systems using air atomising nozzles producing a very fine low-velocity mist.
These systems have their own advantages and limitations dependent on the conditions. Most
water only spraying systems produce a relatively low concentration of coarse droplets with an
aerodynamic diameter in the range of 200-600 microns (Yao-she, Gao-xian, Jun-wei, & Xiao-
bo, 2007). The coarse droplets result in a spray that can handle crosswinds without too much
deviation and can span large distances, however, the large droplet size and low concentration
do not result in good capture efficiencies as fine dust particles easily escape through the
space between the droplets resulting in minimal dust-to-droplet impact. On the other hand, air
atomised sprays produce very fine droplets of a relatively high concentration, which are
extremely effective at capturing fine dust particles (d50< 50 microns). These air atomisers,
however, do not deal well with significant air flow or highly concentrated dust clouds and are
easily blown away in these conditions resulting in poor dust capture performance.
Furthermore, air atomisers also add air into the dust-air problem that is already present. The
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issues presented here plague the performance of many systems typically found in coal mines
and go some way to explaining the poor performance of many of the systems currently
installed in the industry.

To develop more efficient systems a solution must be found that consists of sprays with
correctly sized droplets, high droplet concentrations, and with sufficient energy to withstand
adverse air flow conditions. These requirements led to the development of high energy micro
mist nozzles (EnviroMist). These nozzles operate at pressures ranging typically from 100-300
bar and produce a highly dense and finely atomised spray with high capture effectiveness
even in adverse conditions such as high cross winds. The comparison below (Figure 2)
shows a standard water only spray versus a high energy micro mist both captured in one ten-
thousandth of a second. The first thing to note is the droplet size, the traditional spray
produces coarse droplets which are easily visible in the image and the droplet size
distribution shows the droplet diameter (DV50) of micro-mist spray being less than one sixth
of the coarse droplet spray. These coarse droplets are much larger than the dust particles
they aim to capture and as a result they are generally very inefficient. Secondly, the two
sprays are vastly different in their droplet concentration although having similar water
consumption. This is a function of the decreased droplet size resulting in millions more
droplets dramatically increasing the probability of capture. The two sprays shown in Figure 2
have the same water consumption, however, given the improved capture efficiency of these
sprays, it has been found that they can be operated at flow rates as much as 50% lower than
current systems. This is significant given the importance of sustainable water usage rates; it
has been reported that up to 70% of the water supply in the Pilbara is used for mining
activities with 50% of this being used for dust suppression purposes (Mills, 2010).

Figure 2: Comparison of coarse-droplet and fine droplet micro-mist sprays

DESIGN METHODOLOGY

The effectiveness of airborne dust suppression systems can be significantly improved by

understanding the physics involved as described above and by making basic considerations
based on readily available data. Considerations that need to be made are summarised below:
• Environmental factors
• Size of focus area
• Wind velocities
• Water consumption/availability
• Physical barriers
• Hazards (such as machine or equipment movements and flying rock,
• Dust properties, including Particle Size Distribution (PSD)
• Velocity
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• Concentration
• Nozzles Selection and Position
• Positioned for maximum coverage, maintenance access, and free of any interference
issues that could cause damage
• Nozzle selection for maximum capture efficiency

Nozzle selection and positioning are dependent on both the dust properties and the
environmental factors. Nozzles need to be selected so that they produce water droplets of
similar size to the dust particles to ensure effective capture (as described earlier) – this is
achieved by proper selection of both the nozzle and its operating conditions (higher pressure
leads to smaller droplets but increased water consumption for a specific nozzle). The velocity
of the mist is also of vital importance and is dictated by the choice of nozzle and the operating
parameters; this should be selected based on the area to be covered and the energy of air
and dust flows that will be encountered by the mist. The position should be determined based
on maximum coverage of the dust-air flow region whilst ensuring the nozzles are safe from
damage – this can be easily determined using a 3D-CAD package in combination with mist
profile data.

Matching droplet size with dust particle size has been demonstrated in Figure 3 (Wypych,
Hastie, Wangchai, & Grima, 2015), allowing optimal capture efficiency of the dust particles by
the water droplets.

Figure 3: PSD of dust compared with water DSD

(Wypych, Hastie, Wangchai, & Grima, 2015)

Measurement of air and dust flows that occur in the application is also of vital importance,
making sure to consider the worst-case scenario and the common case to find an acceptable
compromise. This data can be considered as a design variable for selection of an appropriate
nozzle and/or the correct operating conditions for a selected nozzle. The effect that dust-air
flow in an area has on the mist produced by a specific nozzle can be investigated by using
numerical modelling methods, specifically CFD simulations. An investigation and description
into the use of CFD for this purpose is presented in the next section. The penetration distance
of the mist under varying conditions is the key parameter that should be measured using this
technique to ensure that the mist maintains the desired coverage under the required
conditions.

Once a nozzle and its operating conditions are selected, the mist should be modelled using
3D-CAD software with a basic model of the site. This allows the nozzle positioning to be
determined and more easily visualised ensuring full coverage of the desired area whilst
maintaining maintenance access and protection from damage. An example of this is shown in
Figure 4, a full coverage high energy spraying system designed for a standard Run-of-Mine
(ROM) bin. The system is designed to minimise possible damage from falling rocks or
machinery in the area, as well as providing full mist coverage appropriate to the application.

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Figure 4: Dust suppression system for ROM bin

NUMERICAL MODELLING

Numerical modelling of the sprays used for dust suppression purposes presents the
opportunity to understand the flow dynamics and develop a solution with confidence versus
the trial and error based approaches that are commonly used. Research has been completed
to develop a validated and best practice approach of using CFD to model sprays under
varying conditions. ANSYS Fluent is the primary CFD package that has been used; Fluent
provides Volume-of-Fluid (VOF), Eulerian and mixture models as well as a discrete phase
model that uses Lagrangian trajectory tracking. There are two methods that are commonly
used for spray modelling, Eulerian-Eulerian or Lagrangian-Eulerian. The volume-of-fluid
method uses the Eulerian reference frame and is a free surface modelling technique which
allows fluid-to-fluid interfaces to be modelled this is important for the modelling of the
interaction of droplets with air. The VOF method requires an extremely fine mesh to model
the breakup and motion of very small droplets and as such is extremely computationally
expensive. The discrete phase model uses Lagrangian trajectory tracking coupled with a
continuous Eulerian phase to model droplets not as free surfaces but as discrete particles
moving through the air with drag forces applied per the particle properties and specified drag
laws. This technique reduces the need for a very fine mesh and simplifies the model
significantly, in turn reducing the computational expense.

The coupled Lagrangian trajectory tracking method was chosen for this application primarily
due to the reduced computational expense whilst maintaining acceptable accuracy. This
model injects discrete particles into the continuous flow field and tracks the particle trajectory
by integrating a force balance on each particle per the Lagrangian reference frame. The force
balance can be written as;
𝒅𝒖𝒑 𝒈𝒙 �𝝆𝒑 − 𝝆�
= 𝑭𝑫 �𝒖 − 𝒖𝒑 � + + 𝑭𝒙
𝒅𝒅 𝝆𝒑

This equates the particle inertia with the forces acting on the particle. Where Fx is the
acceleration term, FD is the drag force, u and up are the fluid phase and particle velocities
respectively and, ρ and ρp are the fluid and particle densities.

Critical to the accuracy of this model is the meshing method and size used. Two mesh types
were investigated; a polyhedral cell mesh and a Cartesian cut cell mesh both with refinement
close to the nozzle exit. Previous literature modelling of sprinkler sprays found that a grid
resolution of 75 mm was the largest that could be used (Husted, 2007) whilst maintaining
accuracy. A mesh independence study was conducted for this application and found that the
grid resolution should be less than 30 mm in the far field and less than 5 mm near to the
nozzle, with minor difference in accuracy between cut cell and polyhedral meshing methods
found. The use of the polyhedral cells did, however, produce a 30-40% reduction in mesh
size. For this application, the two-equation realisable k-epsilon model (Shih, Liou, Shabbir,
Yang, & Zhu, 1995) was chosen due to its improvement over the commonly used standard k-
epsilon model and its optimisation for modelling free-stream turbulence which is most relevant
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to this application. Two-way modelling is used to accurately account for the interaction
between the air and droplets, the Stokes-Cunningham drag model is used as it provided the
most accurate result for the spray being modelled.

To establish a validated model extensive experimental research on spray dynamics has been
undertaken. This includes measurement of velocity, profile and penetration of many of the
micro mist nozzles available under varying conditions. This allows for validation of the
numerical model primarily in terms of the turbulence and drag models applied such that the
flow dynamics correlates well with real world data.

Model Validation

To ensure the accuracy of simulations it is important that the models are validated against
experimental data. There are two conditions that are used to validate the models; a single
spray operating in static conditions and a single spray operating under a cross-wind.
Experimental data is collected using a variety of laser and imaging techniques with
droplet/mist velocity and position the key variables being measured. The data which is shown
in Figure 5 was collected using Laser Doppler Velocimetry (LDV); this is the droplet velocity
along the centreline of the stream in static conditions. The discrete phase mean cell velocity
with distance predicted by the simulation model is also shown in Figure 5. It can be seen that
the velocity is slightly over predicted by the simulation however it provides a reasonable
estimate allowing the prediction of mist velocity and penetration that can significantly improve
the nozzle positioning process.
80

70

60
Velocity (m/s)

50

40
Predicted
30 Measured

20

10

0
0 500 1000 1500 2000
Distance (mm)

Figure 5: Measured Mean Centreline Velocity of Enviromist Nozzle 1

Figure 6 shows the spray profile produced by the simulation compared with the expected
result observed experimentally. Due to the turbulent nature of an atomised spray this profile
can be variable, however, acceptable agreement is found between the predicted and
experimental data.

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Figure 6: Spray Profile - Experiment vs Prediction (Enviromist Nozzle 2)

The second condition that is considered to ensure correlation between experimental and
predicted data is the spray geometry under cross-wind conditions. This is achieved through
image analysis allowing us to measure the deflected profile of the spray due to the cross-
wind. Figure 7 shows the experimental data presented as a measurement of the distance of
the spray front from the nozzle exit in the horizontal and vertical directions. Figure 8 shows
the predicted mist deflection/predicted profile of one nozzle as simulated using Fluent. There
is still some analysis and testing required to get this model to the accuracy required without
too much computational expense however the ability to predict this deflection will go a great
way to ensuring that nozzles can be correctly selected for conditions associated with any
specific application.

Mist Deflection in Crosswind

4500
Distance from Nozzle Parallel to

4000
3500
3000
150 Bar - 20 km/h
2500
Spray (mm)

Crosswind
2000
1500 200 Bar - 20 km/h
Crosswind
1000
500
0
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000
Distance from Nozzle Perpendicular to Spray (mm)

Figure 7: Measured Mist Deflection

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Figure 8: Predicted Mist Deflection

APPLICATIONS

It was identified at the outset of this paper that ROM bins and stockpile stackers are two
problematic areas that could benefit from improved dust suppression strategies. It is
considered that the application of high energy micro-mist technology in combination with the
CAE design approach already described could achieve this. The application of these
technologies should result in a reduction in dust emissions, a reduction in water consumption,
reduced design effort, and as such an overall reduction in the costs associated with design
and operation of the system.

A typical ROM bin using a non-optimised dust suppression system with low-pressure coarse
droplet water sprays can consume water at a rate of 1000 L/min with dust capture efficiencies
of less than 30% (Courtney and Cheng, 1977). A system utilising micro-mist nozzles,
designed with CAD and CFD modelling techniques was installed at a mining operation in late
2015 (modeled in Figure 4). This mine was suffering from significant dust issues with their
existing system delivering little to no effective dust capture on the ROM bin. The installed
system delivered 100% airborne dust capture and suppression at a water consumption of
only 300 L/min, a 700 L/min reduction compared to the original system that was installed.

Other recent applications of this dust suppression technology include: mobile crushing station
and stacker (Figure 9); BSL boot end discharge in underground coalmine (Figures 10); grab
bucket ship unloading (Figure 12).

Figure 9: Mobile crushing station (before and after dust suppression)

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Figure 10: BSL boot end discharge (with new dust suppression)

BEFORE
(Normal Sprays)

AFTER
(Micro-Mist Sprays)

Figure 11: Effectiveness of new dust suppression for BSL

Figure 12: Grab bucket ship unloading (before and after dust suppression)

Stockpile stackers are an area where this technology has not yet been applied. Typically, the
control of dust in this scenario is very difficult and generally limited to material wetting on the
stacker and surface treatments of the stockpile itself to avoid dust lift-off. The large drop
height combined with high winds results in vast amounts of dust being generated. CFD can
be used to predict both the air/dust flow as well as the performance of sprays selected for use
in this area. Optimisation in this manner can lead to a greater improvement in the initial
performance of the system limiting the amount of modification required after installation.

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CONCLUSIONS

This paper has outlined the issues associated with excess dust emissions with a specific
focus on troublesome areas in the coal industry. High-energy micro-mist nozzles and CFD
modelling have been identified as enabling technologies for improving the control and capture
of airborne dust. The fundamental principles contributing to effective dust capture by water
spraying type systems have to be identified and analysed. Current systems utilising low
concentration coarse droplet sprays or low-velocity air atomising sprays do not provide the
dust capture performance required in the adverse conditions present in the coal industry. For
this reason, a new technology has been presented in the form of high-energy micro-mist
nozzles developed by EnviroMist. These nozzles provide high-velocity and high-density fine
droplet sprays well suited to the conditions found in mining operations. The use of CFD
technology is presented as a means of improving the design and performance prediction of
airborne dust suppression systems. A validated model is presented enabling the simulation of
sprays in typical conditions allowing prediction the spray dynamics under the expected
conditions specific to each individual application. It is expected that this will allow the time
taken to design an airborne dust suppression system to be significantly reduced and much
higher dust capture efficiencies to be achieved once installed. Finally, some potential future
applications are suggested.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research has been conducted with the support of the Australian Government Research
Training Program Scholarship and The International Solids Handling Institute (ISHRI).

REFERENCES

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Husted, B. P. (2007). Experimental measurements of water mist systems and implications for
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Mills, M. (2010, September 15). Wasting water on dust control. Australian Mining .
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