Preparation and characterization of an environmentally friendly compound chemical agent for road dust suppression in a copper mine

The dust on mine road surfaces endangers the health of workers, causing mechanical damage to equipment, and polluting the environment. Existing dust inhibitors have low dust suppression efficiency, weak persistence, are expensive. In this study, an environmentally friendly and efficient compound chemical dust suppressant for transportation road dust in a copper mine was developed. On the basis of testing the physical and chemical properties of the dust samples, the best ratio of dust inhibitor was determined using an orthogonal experiment with sodium polyacrylate, sodium carbonate, polyethylene glycol, and alkyl polyglycoside as raw materials, and using anti-evaporation, hygroscopicity, permeability, pH, and viscosity as the evaluation indexes. Scanning electron micrograph (SEM) and dust removal simulation experiments were conducted. The results show that the optimum formulation of the dust suppressor is 0.08% sodium polyacrylate, 15% sodium carbonate, 2% polyethylene glycol, and 0.15% alkyl glycoside. The SEM experimental results show that the dust samples sprayed with dust suppressor form a network structure from a microcosmic perspective that is conducive to dust suppression. The dust removal efficiency of the whole dust in the laboratory was 96.89% and that of the respirable dust was 86.24%, which proves that the dust suppressor has a good dedusting effect.