Dust reduction method based on water infusion blasting in open-pit mines: a step toward green mining

Abstract

ABSTRACT This research proposes a new dust reduction method based on water infusion blasting in order to effectively minimize the dust production during blasting in open-pit mines. The proposed method was applied at the Haerwusu open-pit coal mine, China. A high-speed camera was used to record the dynamic process of dust generation during blasting. The images acquired from the main locations of the dust were analyzed using the gray level recognition method in MATLAB. The proposed method was then numerically simulated using ANSYS/Fluent software. Finally, the field experiment was conducted to verify the method by analyzing its dust reduction efficiency. The numerical results show that the dust reduction rate of about 78% can be achieved when the water bag is filled at the height of 1.8 m according to the blast design parameters of the mine (burden = 11 m, spacing = 7 m, hole diameter = 0.25 m, hole depth = 20 m). The experimental results achieved a 75% dust reduction rate, which meets the requirements of reducing blasting dust pollution in the studied mine. These investigations and findings conclude that the proposed method is effective, technically feasible, and economical. It can be widely applied to other open-pit mines as a green mining technology.