Temporal-Spatial Distribution of Vehicle Transportation Pavement Dust Migration in an Open-Pit Mine

To investigate the dust source of the most polluted equipment in the open-pit mine, this paper studied the temporal-spatial distribution laws of dust migration in the vehicle transportation pavements in the open-pit mine via theoretical analysis and a field test. The results show that the dust concentration of the same horizontal distance from the pavement centerline remains roughly stable, which proves that the dust above the pavements is a continuous line source. In the horizontal direction, the maximum dust and baseline concentration reached heights of 1-3 and 20 m away from the wheels, respectively, while they are obtained at heights of 0.5 and 2.2 m away from the pavement in the vertical distance, respectively. The spatial concentration distribution of the dust clearly proves that the dust movement mode is a jumping mode. It takes 6 and 30 s after the vehicle had passed to achieve the maximum dust and baseline concentration, respectively. The dust concentration of a fully loaded vehicle is 2-3 times greater than that of a no-load vehicle. Meanwhile, the dust concentration of a sprinkling pavement is as 10% as that of an un-sprinkling pavement. The results of the migration of transportation dust and temporal-spatial distribution provide useful references for the analysis of dust source intension and pollutant diffusion in open-pit mines. Furthermore, the efficient and low-cost moisturized dust suppressant would be the future direction to develop in different mining areas.