Effect of suppressing dust by multi-direction whirling air curtain on fully mechanized mining face

A combined method of numerical simulation and field testing was adopted in this study in the interest of solving the problem of hard to control high concentrate dusts on a fully mechanized mining face. In addition, the dust suppression effect of a multi-direction whirling air curtain was studied in this paper. Under the influence of the wall attachment effect, the compressed air which blows out from the two-phase or three-phase radial outlets on the generator of the air curtain can form a multi-direction whirling air curtain, which can cover the whole roadway section of a fully mechanized mining face. The traditional method of controlling dust is a forcing system with exhaust overlap which has the major disadvantage of lacking a jet effect and consequently results in poor dust control. It is difficult to form the air flow field within the range of Lp⩽5Sr. However, due to the effect of this novel system, the radial airflow can be turned into axial airflow allowing fresh air to flow through the length of the heading. The air flow field which is good at controlling dust diffusion can be formed 12.8 m from the heading face. Furthermore, the field measurement results show that before the application of a multi-direction whirling air curtain, the dust concentration is 348.6 mg/m3 and 271.4 mg/m3 respectively at the roadway cross-section measurement points which are 5 m and 10 m from the heading face. However, after the application of the multi-direction whirling air curtain, the dust concentration is only 61.2 mg/m3 and 14.8 mg/m3, respectively. Therefore, the dust control effect of a multi-direction whirling air curtain is obvious.