Meeting federal dust standards at a longwall mine face is among the more difficult challenges for a longwall mine operator. With recent changes in federal dust regulations requiring lower worker exposure, maintaining compliance has become increasingly difficult. The authors recommend the concept of controlling respirable and float dust, which is inherent in longwall mining, through the application of a flooded-bed dust scrubber to a longwall shearer. A full-scale physical model of a longwall shearer, modified with an integrated flooded-bed scrubber, was designed and fabricated at the University of Kentucky to measure the effects of a flooded-bed scrubber on dust capture at a longwall face. The mockup was transported, assembled, and tested in the longwall dust gallery at the Pittsburgh Research Laboratory of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). Test results indicated a dust reduction of up to 57% in the return airway of the longwall gallery. The test results were validated with Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling with a maximum of 9.7% difference in results. The aim of the study was to test the flooded-bed scrubber concept with a longwall shearer on a half-scale model using the CFD modeling technique. The paper discusses the validation of the developed scaling laws through the results of CFD modeling on the full-scale porotype and half-scale model
