Multi-scale study on the agglomerating and wetting behaviour of binary electrolyte-surfactant coal dust suppression based on multiple light scattering

Abstract

This paper carried out a Multiscale study on the agglomerating and wetting behaviour of binary electrolyte-surfactant in coal dust suppression. The agglomerating behaviour is qualified by stability and SEM analysis, while the wetting behaviour is quantified by surface tension and sink time measurement. Results illustrates 11.78%-14.38% and 42.66%-74.40% improvement on surface tension and sink time reduction when compared with individual surfactants. The binary surfactant-electrolyte results in a stability index of 25.6 to 30.1 of treated coal particles and is 5.91 to 7.82 times higher than that of individual surfactant. Spearman’s correlation analysis confirmed that the solid–liquid two-phase TSI after the addition of electrolyte is more consistent with the dedusting rate than the sink time and the corresponding wettability. The wettability can only effectively determine the dust suppression effect of a specific binary surfactant-electrolyte solution on coal particles of different metamorphic degrees, but the stability index is more sufficient to evaluate the dust suppression performance of different binary surfactant-electrolyte solutions on coal particles of a certain degree of metamorphism.