Numerical and experimental study on the cooling performance of cold load storage functional backfill considering the coupled heat and moisture transfer

Abstract

With the deepening of mining operations, the high thermal environment caused by rising rock temperature poses a major obstacle to the safe and efficient mining of deep mineral resources. Cold load and storage (CLS) functional cemented paste backfill (CPB) combined with radiant cooling is an innovative method for mine cooling. The radiation cooling effect of CLS-functional CPB under the coupling of stope airflow with surrounding rock heat and moisture transfer is simulated in this research. Experimental research has been carried out to validate the heat and moisture transfer model, and satisfactory consistency is attained. A comparison was conducted between models incorporating and omitting moisture evaporation, revealing that disregarding latent heat can result in prejudiced predictions of stope temperatures. The effects of ventilation relative humidity, surrounding rock relative humidity, ventilation speed, surrounding rock temperature, and ventilation temperature on the average temperature and relative humidity of the stope were examined based on orthogonal modeling experiments. According to the findings，the order of importance of the influence of different factors on the average temperature of the stope is: ventilation temperature > surrounding rock temperature > ventilation speed > surrounding rock relative humidity > ventilation relative humidity. The order of importance of the influence of different factors on the average relative humidity of the stope is: ventilation relative humidity > surrounding rock relative humidity > ventilation speed > surrounding rock temperature > ventilation temperature. The results of the research add further theoretical justification to the backfill cooling technological use in real-world applications.