Author(s)

T. Bhowmick, S. Bandopadhyay, T. Ghosh

Abstract

Numerical modeling of fugitive dust dispersion is a convenient method to quantify the degree of air pollution in and around surface mines. Considerable amounts of dust are generated by various unit operations in the mines, such as drilling and blasting, loading of blasted materials and transportation of materials for downstream applications. Environmental conditions in the mine vary from season to season; hence, fugitive dust dispersion simulations using a commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software were conducted for various seasonal conditions with and without cloud cover. Clear sky and cloudy sky conditions result in different radiative and turbulent energy fluxes. In each scenario, fugitive dust particles varying in sizes (PM_0.1 to PM₁₀) and concentrations were generated at various locations of the selected mine. The simulation results predict a speedy removal of fugitive dust in summer. However, during winter, the presence of inversion layer in the open-pit resulted in extensive retention of fugitive dust. For removal of the atmospheric inversion during winter, it is observed that the presence of cloud cover and convective wind are the most important factors.

Keywords

atmospheric inversion, CFD, cloud cover, fugitive dust, LES, mine ventilation, net radiation, open-pit, RANS