Numerical study on interactions between climate conditions and diesel exhaust and optimization of auxiliary ventilation in underground mines. (1st January 2023)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Zhang, Haoyu; Li, Mengya; Xiao, Yue; Han, Xuefei; Liu, Bing; Yang, Wenyu
• Is Part Of: Thermal science and engineering progress. Volume 37(2023)
• Publication Date: 2023-01-01
• Subjects: Heading face -- Auxiliary ventilation -- Diesel exhaust -- Thermal environment -- Numerical simulation; Heat engineering -- Periodicals; Heat engineering; Thermodynamics; Periodicals; 621.402
• DOI: 10.1016/j.tsep.2022.101594
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2451-9049

Abstract

Highlights: The importance of the appropriate boundary conditions was revealed. An optimized ventilation strategy applicable for hot headings was established. Ventilation volume values to solve the hot and diesel exhaust were proposed. Abstract: With the advances in deep mining, workers may be subjected to harsh thermal environments and diesel exhaust in the development headings of deep underground mines. Thus, to maintain the thermal environment and air quality in such mines, it is necessary to carefully design auxiliary ventilation systems based on the distribution of the airflow velocity, airflow temperature and humidity, and diesel exhaust. In this study, a three-dimensional model of a development heading was constructed based on an actual underground mine; subsequently, appropriate turbulence and species transport models were applied to perform numerical simulations using computational fluid dynamics. The simulation results revealed the following: (1) the importance of accurately setting temperature and/or heat flux boundary conditions for the design of ventilation systems and (2) the underestimation of the air supply volume based on the enthalpy difference method. Therefore, this study combined the sigma heat difference method and the power of diesel equipment with a multiplier to achieve an optimal ventilation strategy that can realize the dual functions of improving both the thermal environment and air quality. Notably, this study addresses the deficiency of conventional numerical simulations for diesel exhaust distributions and lays the foundation for accurate ventilation designs of hot development headings.