Effect of coal mine organic aerosol on the methane/air lower explosive limit

Organic aerosol is formed in coal mines due to heat release and evaporation of organics from coal during the longwall operation.This frictional heating occurs when a metallic cutting bit strikes a rock.Thus formed organic aerosol can contribute significantly to the explosivity of methane/air atmosphere in coal mines.In this paper,the flammable limits for the methane-air mixtures with organic aerosol are determined.For this purpose,organic aerosol is synthesizes from the coal-tar pitch in a laboratory evaporation-nucleation flow chamber.Aerosol particles synthesized under laboratory conditions are aggregates consisting of small primary particles with the fractal-like dimension Df=2.0±0.1,which is close to Df=2.1±0.1 of coal mine aerosol.It is shown that the flammability of organic aerosol/methane mixture in air is in good agreement with the Le Chatelier additive principle.The lower ignition limit for the pure organic aerosol in air is 44 g/m^3.