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U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Coal aerosol research and development, 1972--1975. Final report. [28 refs]

Technical Report ·
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/7214452· OSTI ID:7214452
A program to design and construct hardware systems for testing coal mine air sampling instruments, to develop a reproducible coal test dust, and to investigate the characteristics of one particular personal coal mine sampler has been completed. Four aerosol test systems were constructed which provided reproducible coal dust aerosols at concentrations up to 6 mg/m/sup 3/. These units generated a coal dust environment with a uniformity and stability within +- 11 percent of a desired concentration. Concurrently, a reproducible log-normally distributed coal dust with size parameters of 3.75 +- 0.25-..mu..m mass median aerodynamic diameter and a geometric standard deviation of 2.1 +- 0.1 was developed. These size parameters were optimum for a single point cyclone calibration, based on the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH) respirable dust curve. Calibration of the 10-mm nylon cyclone personal sampler with log-normally distributed coal dusts indicated that a flow rate of 1.7 l/min provided best agreement with the dust separation efficiency specified by the ACGIH curve. Dust loading studies of the same sampler indicated that long-term operation with one type of second-stage filter may result in a significant underestimate of respirable dust. Additional studies conducted in highly electrically charged coal dust clouds confirmed that personal sampler performance is unaffected by this charge.
Research Organization:
Los Alamos Scientific Lab., NM (USA)
DOE Contract Number:
W-7405-ENG-36
OSTI ID:
7214452
Report Number(s):
LA-6422
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English