Mining Engineering Commons^™

Investigation Of The Effectiveness Of An Integrated Flooded-Bed Dust Scrubber On A Longwall Shearer Through Laboratory Testing And Cfd Simulation, Sampurna N. Arya

Theses and Dissertations--Mining Engineering

Dust generation at an underground coal mine working face continues to be a health and safety issue. Prolonged exposure to high concentrations of airborne respirable dust can cause a debilitating and often fatal respiratory disease called Black Lung. In addition, the deposition of float dust in mine return airways poses a serious safety hazard if not sufficiently diluted with inert rock dust. A localized methane explosion can transition into a self-propagating dust explosion. Since dust is a byproduct of various mining activities, such as cutting and loading, crushing, and transportation, the dust-related issues cannot be totally eliminated. However, the adverse …

Dust Control Examination Using Computational Fluid Dynamics Modeling And Laboratory Testing Of Vortecone And Impingement Screen Filters, Ashish R. Kumar

Theses and Dissertations--Mining Engineering

Heavy industries, such as mining, generate dust in quantities that present an occupational health hazard. Prolonged exposure to the respirable dust has been found to result in many irreversible occupational ailments in thousands of miners. In underground mining applications, a variety of scrubbing systems are used to remove dust near the zones of generation. However, the wire-mesh type fibrous screens in the flooded-bed dust scrubbers used on continuous miners, are prone to clogging due to the accumulation of dust particles. This clogging results in a reduced capture efficiency and a higher exposure to the personnel. This research establishes the Vortecone, …

Pore Pressure Measurement Instrumentation Response To Blasting, Kylie M. Larson-Robl

Theses and Dissertations--Mining Engineering

Coal mine impoundment failures have been well documented to occur due to an increase in excess pore pressure from sustained monotonic loads. Very few failures have ever occurred from dynamic loading events, such as earthquakes, and research has been done regarding the stability of these impoundment structures under such natural seismic loading events. To date no failures or damage have been reported from dynamic loading events caused by near-by production blasting, however little research has been done considering these conditions. Taking into account that current environmental restrictions oblige to increase the capacity of coal impoundments, thus increasing the hazard of …

Determination Of Explosive Energy Partition Values In Rock Blasting Through Small-Scale Testing, Joshua Calnan

Theses and Dissertations--Mining Engineering

Blasting is a critical part of most mining operations. The primary function of blasting is to fragment and move rock. For decades, attempts have been made at increasing the efficiency of blasting to reduce costs and increase production. Most of these attempts involve trial and error techniques that focus on changing a single output. These techniques are costly and time consuming and it has been shown that as one output is optimized other outputs move away from their optimum level. To truly optimize a blasting program, the transfer of explosive energy into individual components must be quantified. Explosive energy is …

Sustainable Disposal Of Coal Processing Waste Streams, Mohammad Rezaee

Theses and Dissertations--Mining Engineering

Modern coal preparation facilities incorporate a wide array of solid-solid and solid-liquid separation processes for rejecting mineral matter to meet market specifications. The coarse mineral matter is typically placed into engineered refuse piles whereas the fine refuse is either stored in impoundments or co-disposed with the coarse refuse. The discharge water from the refuse material represents an environmental concern due to the potential release of trace elements, and the subsequent elevation of total dissolved solids and conductivity. The research findings reported in this dissertation addresses sustainable coal processing waste disposal through using strategies aimed at minimizing the environmental impacts. To …

Predicting The Dynamic Behavior Of Coal Mine Tailings Using State-Of-Practice Geotechnical Field Methods, Ali Salehian

Theses and Dissertations--Civil Engineering

This study is focused on developing a method to predict the dynamic behavior of mine tailings dams under earthquake loading. Tailings dams are a by-product of coal mining and processing activities. Mine tailings impoundments are prone to instability and failure under seismic loading as a result of the mechanical behavior of the tailings. Due to the existence of potential seismic sources in close proximity to the coal mining regions in the United States, it is necessary to assess the post-earthquake stability of these tailings dams.

To develop the aforementioned methodology, 34 cyclic triaxial tests along with vane shear tests were …

Experimental Comparison Study Of The Response Of Polycarbonate And Laminated Glass Blast Resistant Glazing Systems To Blast Loading, Joshua Calnan

Theses and Dissertations--Mining Engineering

This thesis recounts the experimental study of the dynamic response of polycarbonate blast resistant glazing systems to explosive loading through the use of triaxial load cells, pressure sensors, and a laser displacement gauge. This instrumentation captured the response of the glazing systems to blast loading over three phases of testing. The first phase of testing characterizes the load distribution around the perimeter and the second phase examines the repeatability of the results. The final phase of testing pushes the samples to failure. The results are then compared to HazL, a commonly used blast resistant glazing system analysis software tool. The …

Froth Flotation Performance Enhancement By Feed Cavitation And Magnetic Plastic Particle Addition, Mehmet Saracoglu

Theses and Dissertations--Mining Engineering

Froth flotation is the most commonly used process to recover and upgrade the portion of the coal preparation plant feed that has a particle size smaller than 150 microns. Problems that occur when employing froth flotation in the coal industry include i) coal surfaces that are weakly-to-moderately hydrophobic, and ii) flotation systems that are overloaded and limited by insufficient retention time.

Research was performed to evaluate techniques that could be implemented to improve flotation performance under the aforementioned scenarios. Pre-aeration of flotation feed using a cavitation system was extensively evaluated in laboratory and full-scale test programs. The benefits of adding …

Development Of Strategies To Minimize The Release Of Trace Elements From Coal Waste Sources, Mohammad Rezaee

Theses and Dissertations--Mining Engineering

To assess strategies aimed at minimizing the release of trace elements and the impact of disposal of coal waste materials on the environment, two long-term leaching experiments of up to five months duration were performed using waste materials from two plants cleaning high and low sulfur bituminous coal. The tests evaluated the mobility of major trace elements under different disposal scenarios: (i) a static leaching test designed to simulate the quiescent conditions encountered by coal waste material stored under water in a stable impoundment, and (ii) a dynamic test to simulate waste materials exposed to the atmosphere, either in variable …