(59d) Performance Evaluation of Dust Suppressors of Ore Storage Piles By Spectroscopy and Wind Tunnel

The emission of fine particulate matter as dust from iron ore stockpiles is one of the concerns within logistics in the mining industry. In addition to possible environmental and health damages, iron ore being the raw material for the steelmaking process, economic losses point to the problem. The use of dust suppressors sprinkled on the surface of iron ore stockpiles is an effective method to reduce the emission of particulate matter, however due to the instability of the system: ore surface and suppressor agent there is no consensus regarding the expected properties of an efficient suppressor. Here we have developed a methodology to evaluate the performance of dust suppressors in iron ore piles using wind tunnel. Furthermore here is also proposed a test for prediction of suppressor performance using multivariate analysis with infrared spectroscopy data of suppressors with 86% accuracy. It was verified that the suppressors performance does not correlate linearly with the surface tension, wettability property. The suppressors tested did not significantly contaminate the iron ore confirmed by the thermal analysis of the samples. The high performance suppressors showed the hydrophobicity index of the bands 2926/3300 cm^-1 lower than 0.333. In addition, this methodology can be adapted for the evaluation of suppressors of particulate material of other types of materials that demand bulk storage, in order to assist in the evaluation of the best products.