Magnetic Confinement of Dust Particles: Novel Instrumentation for Potash Mining Applications

The control of dust particles in mining environments poses an occupational health and operational challenge. Traditional mitigation strategies, including water sprays, surfactants, and baghouse systems, face limitations due to high costs, maintenance requirements, and safety concerns. This paper introduces a novel instrumentation and measurement system designed to monitor triboelectric charging of moving dust particles and employ those measurements to evaluate magnetic confinement in potash mining. The setup combines mass, differential voltage, capacitive voltage, differential pressure and air quality monitoring measurements to monitor particle charging and the resulting transport behavior. The results from these experiments demonstrated that magnetic confinement improves dust capture efficiency and reduces the outlet particle concentration by up to 75%. These findings demonstrate that combining triboelectric charging with external magnetic fields provides an effective dry method for dust mitigation. It also showcases the depth of the instrumentation and its potential to support sustainable dust control in mining operations.