Dust Control – Soil Stabilization – Erosion Control

The importance of Coal Dust Control – Coal dust control, can, if not handled carefully, result in serious health issues, chiefly high concentrations of breathable coal dust which can lead to pneumoconiosis – or ‘black lung disease’ – and silicosis from mining material with a high quartz content.

There are measures that mines can take such as ensuring workers wear masks and introducing engineering controls including ventilation dilution, water infusion, wet-cutting, water sprays, wetting agents and foam, and coal dust control collectors such as dust scrubbers.

Better-than-expected results from recent tests of a dust scrubber at BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance’s mine at Broadmeadow in Queensland’s Bowen Basin give hope for healthier mine environments.

Scrubber systems have been tested before but success was limited by a lack of understanding of the dust and airflow patterns around the sites for coal dust control.

With the support of the Australian Coal Association Research Program (ACARP), CSIRO has taken on several research projects based on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modelling to improve the understanding of dust flow patterns around the longwall shearer and walkway under different operating conditions.

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