Coal dust control by condensation enlargement.

Schowengerdt-FD; Brown-JT Jr.

Particulate Science Laboratory, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, Colorado, Terminal Progress Report 1982 Jun; :1-34

00181018

A prototype dust conditioning system for control of coal dust was designed, constructed, and evaluated based on the concept of condensation enlargement. The volume of the device was 0.74 cubic feet and it was designed to handle up to 50 cubic feet per minute (cfm) of dust laden air. The performance of the device was evaluated for both naturally occurring aerosols and laboratory generated coal dust. Both these samples nucleated and grew readily in the conditioner with output droplet sizes ranging up to 10 microns and a large fraction of these falling out inside the conditioner. Nucleation efficiencies of 95 percent were measured, resulting in overall mass removal efficiencies greater than 99 percent at flow rates of 10cfm. At 50cfm, the efficiency dropped to 80 percent. The conditioner consumed 10 gallons of water per hour. Various engineering problems encountered included heat transfer, plate wetting and temperature stability. The device was able to be scaled to a capacity of 3000cfm, sufficient for a full scale mining application. The authors suggest that a geometric configuration of a concentric cylindrical shape with the outer cylinder being cooled and heat introduced along the inner cylinder should be examined as this would have some advantages over the present plane geometry used in the prototype.

NIOSH-Grant; Mining-industry; Dust-control; Dust-collectors; Dust-control-equipment; Mineral-dusts; Air-quality-control

Physics Colorado School of Mines Department of Physics Golden, Colo 80401

19820630

Final Grant Report

149736

Grant

1982

PB88-248679

A04

Grant-Number-R01-OH-00822

OEP

Particulate Science Laboratory, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, Colorado, Terminal Progress Report

CO

Colorado School of Mines, Golden, Colorado