Partic. vol. 4 no. 5 pp. 229-233 (October 2006)
doi: 10.1016/S1672-2515(07)60265-6

Influence of air humidity on the suppression of fugitive dust by using a water-spraying system

Peter Werner Grundnig^{a, *}, Wilhelm Höflinger^a, Gerd Mauschitz^a, Zechang Liu^b, Guiqin Zhang^b, Zhiqiang Wang^b

grundnig@mail.tuwien.ac.at

Abstract

One of the main origins of fugitive dust emission arises from bulk handling in quarries or mines, in particular, from bulk materials falling from a hopper or a conveyor belt. Water-spraying systems, using two-phase nozzles, are one of the methods to suppress such dust emission. In this work we tried to develop a mathematical model to correlate air humidity, water flux through the nozzle and the dust (in particular PM10) emission, in order to improve the application and efficiency of these systems. Sand from the Yellow River in China was dropped from a conveyor belt into a dust chamber at 1 kg·min⁻¹, wherefrom the emitted dust was sucked off and quantified via a cascade impactor. A two-phase nozzle was installed in the dust chamber with a water flux through the nozzle of 1.2 to 3 L·h⁻¹, whereas the relative air humidity changed between 55 and 73%. Dust emission was found to be linearly dependent on relative air humidity. Furthermore model equations were developed to describe the dependence of PM10 emission on water flux and relative air humidity.

Keywords

dust suppression; spraying system; air humidity; water flux; bulk solids; fugitive dust emission