Building a non-homogeneous environment for high effective cooling in the face of deep mines

Heat exhaustion of mining environments can cause a great threat to human health. The existing cooling strategies for the mine face aim to cool the whole face. However, the area of effective air-cooling space for the face is small, and a great amount of energy for cooling is ineffective. Effective air-cooling space is a space occupied by the workers in the face. This study proposed to build a non-homogeneous environment for high effective cooling in the face. An inlet air cooler was laid out in the intake airway to cool the whole face to some extent, and the tracking air cooler was designed to track the worker who constantly moved to improve the thermal environment. The cooling load and air distribution for this cooling strategy were investigated. In addition, the airflow in the face was numerically solved to estimate the cooling effect. The results revealed that an average energy saving of approximately 35% could be achieved. The thermal environment of the effective air-cooling space within at least 10 m was significantly improved. This cooling strategy should be taken into account in mine cooling.