Investigation on dust dispersion during support movement in a fully mechanized mining face and the technology with support frame enclosure dust control

A fully mechanized mining face is characterized by serious dust pollution and dust is a major cause of pneumoconiosis that haunts numerous miners. For a fully mechanized face having large mining heights, the main dust source in the pavement area is produced by the moving support frame. To reduce the amount of dust during support's movement, the distribution and dissipation of dust in this process were studied by combining numerical simulations with underground measurements. The results showed that with an increase of the distance from the air inlet, the wind speed of the sidewalk in the fully mechanized face first increased, then decreased, and finally increased again. At the position of the coal cutter, the highest wind speed was 1.78 m/s and the average wind speed of the roadway was about 0.8 m/s. The dust concentration at the dust source was >1000 mg/m³. An area with a high dust concentration and having a length of 15 m was formed on the rooftop, together with a 50 m long dust belt with a dust concentration of 300 to 450 mg/m³ in the pavement area of 10 m from the dust source. Beyond the 45 m radius from the dust source, the dust concentration was stable at about 250 mg/m³. Based on the dust production characteristics of the support frame, an enclosed dust-guiding device was designed and structure-optimized. Based on the on-site field application test results, it was found that the device has a satisfactory dust-guiding effect during support movement and the dust suppression rate near the dust source reached 94.8%.