Gas-Neutralizing and Dust-Suppressing Stemming of Borehole Charges for Increasing the Environmental Safety of Explosion

The problem of environmental pollution during the explosive destruction of rocks in order to extract minerals is solved in the article. Two types of borehole charge stemming design have been developed, which, in addition to the function of locking the products of the explosion, allow completely neutralizing harmful gases. The first type is the stemming design, which includes the two-stage purification of harmful gases, formed during the explosive destruction of rocks, and is based on chemisorption of gases by quicklime or production waste and physicochemical sorption (adsorption) by zeolites. Such stemming can provide complete chemical neutralization of NO₂ and CO2, as well as neutralization of CO by zeolites, during the explosion. The second type is stemming design, which includes chemisorption of gases by slaked lime. This type of stemming has a number of advantages over the previous one. It can not only provide complete chemical neutralization of NO₂, CO₂ and CO, but also allows abandoning zeolites, which significantly reduces the cost of its formation to obtain the effect of “irrigation” of the dust and gas cloud, which reduces the concentration of dust in the air after the explosion to provide a higher degree of conversion. The paper determines quantitative and qualitative characteristics of the adsorbent composition of the two types of stemming depending on the type of explosive, the amount and type of harmful gases formed during explosion, and the parameters of the borehole.