Fuel 260 (2020) 116401

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Minimum explosion concentration of coal dusts in air with small amount of T

CH4/H2/CO under 10-kJ ignition energy conditions
Peng Zhaoa, Xin Tana, Martin Schmidtb, Aizhu Weia, Weixing Huanga, Xinming Qianc,
⁎
Dejian Wua,b,
a
School of Chemical Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, China
b
Division 2.1 ‘‘Explosion Protection Gases and Dusts’’, Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung (BAM), Unter den Eichen 87, D-12205 Berlin, Germany
c
State Key Laboratory of Explosion Science and Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: A 20-L spherical explosion chamber was used to investigate the minimum explosion concentration (MEC) of coal
Hybrid mixture dusts with small amount of flammable gas which is lower than its lower explosion limit (LEL). Two dust samples
Coal dust (anthracite coal and bituminous coal) and three flammable gases (CH4, H2 and CO) were tested. Two methods
Flammable gas respectively based on overpressure and combustion duration time were used to determine the MEC of the hybrid
Minimum explosion concentration
mixtures. Experimental results show that the explosion of hybrid mixtures occurs when both dust and gas
Lower explosion limit
concentrations are lower than the LEL or MEC of the single substances. As flammable gas concentration in-
creases, either explosion pressure (Pex) and explosion pressure rise (dp/dt)ex) increase or the MEC decreases for
all the hybrid gas-dust mixtures as a general trend, showing a strong concentration effect. At the same con-
centration of coal dusts, the addition of CH4 poses a higher explosion risk than the other two flammable gases.
Moreover, it was found that the results of MEC determined by both methods agree each other well, suggesting
that both methods are valid to determine MEC of hybrid mixture in the synergic explosion region. The dis-
tribution of experimental data in the explosion regimes shows that the restricted areas defined by empirical
formulas are insufficient from safety considerations.

1. Introduction
The hybrid mixtures of combustible dusts and flammable gases are
widely existing in coal mining, petrochemical, metallurgical, textile and
pharmaceutical industries [1–3]. The hybrid mixture explosions of coal
dust, methane and hydrogen can occur in the processes of coal mining,
transportation, storage and utilization, with great losses of life and
property. For instance, methane (CH4) can be released during the
mining process [4–7], and flammable gases including CH4, carbon
monoxide (CO) and hydrogen (H2) can be generated from the self-
heating, spontaneous combustion, or pyrolysis processes of coal [8–10].
It may pose a higher explosion risk in the industrial processes of dust
handling with presence of these flammable gases.
Similarly with investigations on gas explosion characteristics
[11,12], most attention has been paid to the explosion severity of hy-
brid mixtures including explosion pressure (Pex), explosion pressure rise
(dp/dt)ex) and explosion index (K). Agrida et al. [13] investigated the
explosion behaviour of hybrid mixtures of nicotinic acid dust and me-
thane and pointed out that these explosion behaviours can be drawn on
a same graph with 5 different regimes, i.e., dust driven explosion, dual-
fuel explosion, gas driven explosion, synergic explosion and no explo-
sion. Li et al. [14] used a standard 20-L explosion spherical vessel to
investigate the explosion characteristics of hybrid mixtures, the results
showed that both Pex and (dp/dt)ex present an increasing and then de-
creasing trend with increasing CH4 contents in the hybrid mixtures, and
the peak values appears at the point that mole fraction of CH4 is 10%.
Kosinski et al. [15] studied the explosion characteristic of carbon black
with a low content of volatiles and propane and found that it is possible
to obtain flame propagation even when the concentration of gaseous
fuel is below the lower flammability limit. Hassan et al. [16] proposed a
predictive model based on experimental data from literature to assess
the probability of a dust explosion occurrence in a given environment.
Sanchirico et al. [17] and Addai et al. [18] conducted experiments in a
20-L spherical vessel to prove the validity or limitations of some for-
mulas for various combinations of dust and gases. Ji et al. [19] in-
vestigated the vented hybrid mixture explosions of lycopodium dust
and methane and found that the addition of methane to lycopodium
dust led to an increase in both maximum explosion pressure and the

⁎
Corresponding author at: School of Chemical Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, China.
E-mail address: dejian.wu@scu.edu.cn (D. Wu).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fuel.2019.116401
Received 19 July 2019; Received in revised form 5 October 2019; Accepted 9 October 2019
Available online 14 October 2019
0016-2361/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
P. Zhao, et al.
maximum rate of pressure rise and a decrease in the optimum dust
concentration. Kundu et al. [20] studied the explosion characteristics of
methane-coal dust hybrid mixtures and observed that the violence of
coal dust explosions increases significantly in the presence of methane.
Minimum explosible concentration (MEC), as a crucial sensitivity
parameter in dust explosion evaluation and prevention, is the con-
centration boundary above which a dust-oxidant mixture will propa-
gate a flame in the presence of adequate ignition source. MEC has been
found to be influenced by particle size, ignition energy, fuel properties
and gas conditions, as well as explosion criterion [21–23]. Yuan et al.
[22] argued that the standardized method with a fixed ignition delay
(tig) of 60 ms based on explosion pressure (Pex) may overestimate the
MEC because Pex strongly depends on tig (i.e., Pmax may not occur at tig
of 60 ms), and proposed an alternative method by using combustion
duration time (tcom) to determine the MEC based on the test results of
overpressure evolution in 20-L spherical chamber. Their results [22]
showed that the values of MEC determined by using tcom were slightly
lower than the data obtained by the standardized method. Addai et al.
[23] further studied the explosion characteristics of three component
hybrid mixtures and the results demonstrated that a hybrid explosion is
possible even when dust, gas and vapor concentrations are respectively
lower than their MEC of dust and LEL of gas and vapor.
Most of the above studies only focused on dust/gas driven explosion
or dual fuel explosion, however, few studies have investigated synergic
explosion (i.e., the concentrations of both dust and gas are below the
MEC or LEL of their pure substances in air). And less attention has been
paid to the explosion sensitivity of hybrid mixtures, such as minimum
ignition temperature/energy (MIT/MIE) and MEC etc. To fill this gap,
this paper thus aims to study the MEC of hybrid coal dust-flammable
gas mixtures in synergic explosion regions.
2. Experimental
2.1. Experimental materials
Methane, hydrogen and carbon monoxide were selected as the
flammable gases. The properties of these flammable gases are shown in
Table 1. Usually, the concentration in premixed 40-L gas cylinders is
not the concentration of participating the reaction for the air existence
in the test chamber and dust container, so we make some calculations as
Eq. (1) and convert the concentration in the gas cylinder into the
concentration of participating the reaction.
ΔP1 × ΔP2
Cchamber = × Ccylinder
P1 × P2
whereΔP1 is the pressure difference before and after of compressed gas
inject the dust container, P1 is the pressure after the compressed gas
inject the dust container, ΔP2 is the pressure difference before and after
the gas from the dust container to the chamber, P2 is the pressure in the
chamber before the ignite, Ccylinder is the mole fraction in the 40-L gas
cylinder and Cchmaber is the mole fraction of participating the reaction in
the explosion chamber. The concentrations of the flammable gases used
in explosion chamber were calculated according to Eq. (1) as shown in
Table 2.
Two coal dust samples with different volatile matters: anthracite
coal and bituminous coal were used in this work. Prior to each test, the
dust was systematically dried at 40 ℃ in a vacuum oven for 2 h. Table 3
Table 1
Properties of flammable gases [24].
Properties Density (g/m3) Molecular weight Explosible range (vol./%)
CH4 660 16 4.4–17
H2 89.9 2 4–77
CO 1250 28 10.9–75.6
Fuel 260 (2020) 116401
Table 2
Concentration of the flammable gases.
Concentration CH4 H2 CO
Ccylinder (vol. %) 1 2 3 1 2 2.5 1 2 3
Cchamber (vol. %) 0.57 1.14 1.71 0.57 1.14 1.43 0.57 1.14 1.71
shows the industrial analysis of the coal dusts including the composi-
tions and the heat value. The particle size distribution also plays an
important role in the explosion characteristics of dust clouds [25,26]. A
particle size analyser equipment (CAM-SIZER) was used to examine size
distribution of the coal dusts. Fig. 1 represents the size distributions of
the coal dusts, showing that the median diameters are 9.95 and
14.33 μm for anthracite and bituminous coal, respectively. Moreover,
the SEM (scanning election microscopy) images of these two coal dust
samples illustrate that individual particles are not spherical but a
granular shape (Fig. 2).
2.2. Experimental apparatus and procedure
This section describes a standardized test sphere used to measure
the explosion parameters as is shown Fig. 3. It consisted of a spherical
test chamber with a volume of 20 L and a dust container with a volume
of 0.6 L. A water jacket was made surrounding by the stainless-steel
spherical chamber for the control of the internal wall temperature. The
details of the apparatus can be referred from European Standards [27]
and Krietsch et al. [25]. During the test, the pre-weighed coal dusts
were settled down the dust container with a volume of 0.6 L, and then
were dispersed into the 20-L spherical chamber that was evacuated to
0.4 bar with the help of premixed compressed gas mixture (21 bar) and
ignited by a centrally-mounted chemical igniter with the energy of
10 kJ. Note that a fixed ignition delay time (i.e., the time interval from
the beginning of air/gas mixtures blast to the moment of ignition) of
60 ms was used for all the tests in this work. Consequently, the explo-
sion pressure was recorded as a function of time by using piezoelectric
pressure sensors. All the tests were conducted 3 times and the average
value was taken as the test results.
3. Methods of MEC determination
Two methods were used to determine MEC in the dust explosions:
according to overpressure or combustion duration time of dust explo-
sion. The most common one is based on the European Standard EN
(1)
14034 [27], i.e., an overpressure of 0.03 MPa excluding ignitor is re-
garded as the explosion/non-explosion criterion. In this work, 10-kJ
chemical igniters were used which can can generate explosion pressure
of 0.11 MPa, and 40 g/m3 coal dust sample was used as the initial dust
concentration. If the maximum pressure of the test was higher than
0.14 MPa (gauge), the concentration of coal dust was decreased by
using 10 g/m3 as the concentration gradient until the maximum pres-
sure was lower than 0.14 MPa (gauge), and the corresponding con-
centration was defined as C1. Then the concentration was increased by
5 g/m3 as the concentration gradient until the maximum pressure was
equal to or slightly higher than 0.14 MPa (gauge) with three repetitions,
and the corresponding concentration was defined as C2. Finally, the
target concentration (Ct) was supposed to be between C1 and C2, i.e.,
Specific heat capacity (kJ/kg·K) Heat of combustion (kJ/mol)
2.238 890.3
14.44 285.5
1.039 283.0
2
P. Zhao, et al. Fuel 260 (2020) 116401

Table 3
Properties of the coal dust samples.
Properties Median diameter Volatile content (%) in mass Moisture content (%) in mass Ash (%) in mass Fixed carbon (by Heat of combustion (kJ/kg)
(μm) basis basis basis diff.)

Anthracite 9.95 8.16 1.3 27.42 63.12 34,000

Bituminous 14.33 23.55 1.17 27.93 47.35 24,280

Fig. 1. Particle size distribution of the dust samples: (a) Bituminous coal and (b) Anthracite coal.

Fig. 2. SEM image of coal dust samples: (a) bituminous and (b) anthracite.

evaluated by

K = (dp /dt )ex V 1/3 (3)

where V is the volume of the explosion chamber, which is a constant in

this work, i.e., 20 L.
As shown in Fig. 4, both the curve of only igniter and curve of 30 g/

Fig. 3. Schematic diagram of the 20-L explosion sphere.

C1 < Ct < C2 (2)

For the convenience of comparison, the minimum supercritical

concentration C2 was selected as the MEC of coal dust in this paper.
Once the explosion pressure vs. time curves are obtained, the other
important characteristic parameter explosion index (K) can be Fig. 4. Typical pressure vs. time during a dust explosion in the 20-L sphere.

3
P. Zhao, et al.
m3 bituminous coal dust with 1.14% CH4 in air were illustrated. Gen-
erally, after the time node of start of the injection, there are three stages
of pressure change. The first stage suggests that the compressed air
carries compressed gas and coal dust flow into the chamber, after that
the pressure in the chamber becomes constant. The second stage shows
the pressure rise rapidly due to the combustion of igniter and the
combustible hybrid mixtures. After the peak of the explosion pressure
was reached and then started to decay with time due to heat dissipa-
tions from the chamber wall. Considering the device output char-
acteristic (i.e., the overpressure of 0.11 MPa contributed by the 10-kJ
chemical igniter shown in Fig. 4) and local ambient pressure (0.1 MPa),
we used the absolute pressure (0.24 MPa), i.e., the increment of
0.03 MPa of overpressure generated by the dust explosion was mea-
sured according to the European Standard EN 14034 as the criterion to
judge if an explosion occurs or not.
The other alternative method is based on combustion duration time,
which was proposed and validated by our previous work [22]. For the
combustion of a dust cloud, the individual particles near the ignitor are
initially ignited first and form spot flames, and then these luminous
spots propagate the flame to the surrounding particles gradually by
means of diffusion [28,29]. If the concentration of the dust cloud is
lower than its MEC, the concentration of dust cloud is too diluent to
maintain the continuous flame propagation, thus no explosion occurs.
Once the concentration reaches the MEC, the self-sustained flame will
be formed and propagated throughout the entire volume of the 20-L
sphere. At the MEC, thus the average distance between particles is
supposed to be the maximum distance that the flame can propagate
continuously, and the flame propagation velocity at the MEC is sup-
posed to be minimal correspondingly. In other words, a maximal time
interval is required at the MEC for flame to propagate from ignited spots
to the entire volume of the sphere. The corresponding combustion
duration time (i.e., tc, defined as the time interval between ignition and
the moment of combustion reaction completion) can be obtained from
the pressure-time curves. In other words, the moment of reaction
completion is at the maximum of the overpressure according to the 3
typical stages mentioned above. For instance, the MEC can be de-
termined as 10 g/m3 with the maximum tc of 105 ms for the bituminous
coal dust in air with 1.14% CH4, which is consistent with the de-
termination method based on overpressure (0.03 MPa) as illustrated in
Fig. 5. tc distinctly decreases with further increasing of dust con-
centration from 10 to 30 g/m3, while when dust concentration reduces
to 5 g/m3, the self-sustained flame cannot propagate to the entire 20-L
sphere, suggesting no explosion occurs.
Fig. 5. Combustion duration time (tc) of bituminous coal dust at various con-
centrations in the 20-L sphere.
4
Fuel 260 (2020) 116401
Fig. 6. The effect of small amount of CH4 on the explosion process of 20 g/m3
bituminous coal dust.
4. Results and discussion
4.1. Effect of small amount flammable gas on MEC and explosion severity
The presence of flammable gas was found to have a significant effect
on the dust explosion process as shown in Fig. 6. When the CH4 con-
centration increases from 0.57% to 1.71%, both the overpressure (Pex)
and the pressure rise rate ((dp/dt)ex) increase significantly. Even as low
as 0.57% CH4 can clearly promote the combustion reaction of 20 g/m3
bituminous coal dust and change the flame structure from non-con-
tinuous to continuous. In other words, the presence of small amount of
CH4 decreases the MEC of bituminous coal dust. Similarly, the results of
MEC of the coal dust samples at other gas conditions can be obtained
and plotted in Fig. 7. The details of MEC and corresponding explosion
severity parameters are summarised in Table 4.
As shown in Fig. 7, Pex respectively increases from 0.2 MPa to
0.38 MPa for bituminous coal and from 0.222 MPa to 0.34 MPa for
anthracite coal, as the coal dust concentration increases from 10 g/m3
to 40 g/m3. This is because in the condition of low concentration of coal
dust, the amount of oxygen is abundant, the injection of more coal dust
makes the fuel content increasing, releasing more heat and generating a
higher explosion pressure. Although MEC were determined to be 25 g/
m3 for both bituminous coal and anthracite coal in air, the corre-
sponding explosion pressures of bituminous coal are always larger than
that of anthracite coal at the same dust concentrations. The finding is
different with the observation by Yuan et al. [22] showing that in the
same concentration of coal dust, explosion pressure generated by the
anthracite coal with high heat values was larger than that of bituminous
coal with low heat values. The reason is probably resulted from the dust
concentration: very diluent dust concentrations (up to 40 g/m3) were
used in this work (Fig. 7), while dense dust concentrations (at least
150 g/m3) were used in the work of Yuan et al. [22]. And the presence
of flammable gas transits the explosion region from dust-drive explo-
sion to synergic explosion. Further investigation is required to explain
this interesting observation.
On the other hand, the addition of flammable gases increases the Pex
and decreases the MEC of both dust samples. This is because at low
concentrations of coal dusts, the amount of oxygen is abundant, the
addition of flammable gas resulting into more heat release. The pro-
motion effect on the explosion of the coal dust samples follows
CH4 > H2 > CO as a general trend shown in Fig. 7. CH4 having the
highest combustion heat compared with the other two gases can release
more heat (see Table 3). Regarding to H2 and CO having the compar-
able combustion heat, the reason why the promotion impact of H2 is
superior to CO might be that H2 promotes the ignition of volatiles, i.e.,
mostly CxHy [14]. In addition, under the same conditions CH4 has a
P. Zhao, et al. Fuel 260 (2020) 116401

Fig. 7. The effect of flammable gas and dust concentration on Pex and MEC of dust samples: (a) bituminous coal and (b) anthracite coal.

higher promotion effect on MEC and Pex (reflecting the thermo-
dynamics), but a lower promotion effect on (dp/dt)ex (reflecting the
flame propagation dynamics) than H2 for both coal dust samples. For
instance, 15 g bituminous coal dust with 0.57% CH4 having (dp/dt)ex of
8.9 MPa/s is lower than that of 15 g bituminous coal dust with 0.57%
H2 (10.5 MPa/s) as summarized in Table 4. Further study on the flame
propagation dynamics for the hybrid mixtures is required.
4.2. Theoretical relation of the MEC of hybrid mixtures
To assess MEC of hybrid mixtures, a map where gas content (vol.
%/LEL) and dust concentration (Cdust/MEC) are respectively the x and
y-axis was developed and two empirical formulas were used to separate
the region of explosion from the non-explosion. Two empirical formulas
Eq. (4) (Bartknecht’s curve [30]) and Eq. (5) (Glassmann & Yetter’s line
[31]) are respectively listed below:
Bartknecht’s curve:
2
Xgas ⎞
MEChybrid = MECdust ⎜⎛ ⎟
⎝ LEL gas ⎠
where MEChybrid is minimum explosion concentration of the dust in the
hybrid mixture (g/m3), MECdust is minimum explosion concentration of
the dust in the air (g/m3), Xgas is flammable gas concentration in the
hybrid mixture (vol.%), LELgas is lower explosion limit of the gas in the
air (vol. %).
Le Chatelier’s line:
100
MEChybrid = Xgas Cdust
+
LELgas MECdust (5)
where Cdust is dust concentration in the hybrid mixture (g/m3), MECdust
is minimum explosion concentration of the dust in the air (g/m3), Xgas is
flammable gas concentration in the hybrid mixture (vol.%), LELgas is
lowest explosion limit of the gas in the air (vol.%). Even though the two
empirical approaches were proved to have some deficiencies for dif-
ferent materials [13,23,32,33], they are still useful for us to understand
and roughly estimate the MEC of hybrid mixtures. Recently, Abbas et al.
[34] proposed an alternative method based on enthalpy balance of the
system for the theoretical calculation of MEC of hybrid mixtures, a
constant temperature rise of 1000 K was arbitrarily selected as an ig-
nition criterion for all the hybrid mixtures. However, some parameters
such as molecular mass of dust samples are difficult to determine, and
combustion kinetics of different combustible species may affect each
other, especially during the process of devolatilization for carbonaceous
dust samples. Because the flame propagation mechanism may also
transit from the devolatilization-controlled regime to the kinetics-con-
(4) trolled regime with increasing of flammable gas in the hybrid dust-gas
mixture systems [29]. Therefore, the mechanism of synergistic explo-
sion of hybrid mixture needs further investigation.
4.3. Results of hybrid mixtures with bituminous coal
Three diagrams representing different experiment results are shown

Table 4
MEC and corresponding explosion severity characteristics of the coal dusts under different atmospheres.
Coal sample Parameters Flammable gas mole fraction in air (%)

- CH4 H2 CO

0 0.57 1.14 1.71 0.57 1.14 1.43 0.57 1.14 1.71

3
Bituminous coal MEC (g/m ) 25 15 10 5 15 15 15 20 15 15
Pex (MPa) 0.32 0.265 0.267 0.272 0.264 0.258 0.268 0.273 0.263 0.289
(dp/dt)ex (MPa/s) 23.3 8.9 6.8 11.7 10.5 5.5 7.2 5.4 7.2 9.1
K 6.3 2.42 1.85 3.18 2.85 1.49 1.95 1.47 1.95 2.47
Anthracite coal MEC (g/m3) 25 25 10 5 20 20 20 20 20 20
Pex (MPa) 0.271 0.267 0.298 0.326 0.264 0.258 0.268 0.257 0.253 0.258
(dp/dt)ex (MPa/s) 9.5 6.1 4.3 11.6 9.8 7.5 10.5 6 6.4 10.6
K 2.6 1.66 1.17 6.18 2.66 2.04 2.85 1.63 1.74 2.88

5
P. Zhao, et al.
Fig. 8. Explosion regimes of bituminous coal and methane.
Fig. 9. Explosion regimes of bituminous coal and hydrogen.
6
Fuel 260 (2020) 116401
Fig. 10. Explosion regimes of bituminous coal and carbon monoxide.
in Figs. 8–10 for the hybrid mixtures with bituminous coal dust. The x-
axis is expressed by the ratio of flammable gas concentration in the
hybrid mixture to the lowest explosion limit (LEL) of the gas in the air
(see Table 1), the y-axis is expressed by the ratio of dust concentration
in the hybrid mixture to minimum explosion concentration of the dust
in the air. The circles in the diagram represent the explosion over-
pressure Pex (kPa). The grey circle represents the test results of pure
coal dust without flammable gases. The black dots represent the case of
non-explosion; the circles with values nearby represents the case of
ignited mixtures and their diameters are proportional to the value of
Pex. Meanwhile, two relation curves referred to in the Section 4.2 were
drawn in the diagrams.
Fig. 8 shows the explosion regime of the hybrid mixture of bitu-
minous coal and methane, the explosion occurred when the con-
centrations were below MEC/LEL of the pure substances. And near the
Le Chatelier’s line and Barknecht’s curve, there are some clear explo-
sions such as at 0.114 LELCH4/0.8 MECdust, 0.114 LELCH4/0.6 MECdust,
0.228 LELCH4/0.6 MECdust, 0.228 LELCH4/0.4 MECdust and 0.341
LELCH4/0.4 MECdust. Much more explosion points were found to dis-
tribute in the non-explosion, even below the Barknecht’s curve, which is
quite different with the finding by Addai et al. [23]. The difference is
probably caused by using the different types of ignition source. Ac-
cording to the study of Hosseinzadeh et al. [35], the ignition source has
a significant influence on the maximum rate of pressure rise: the che-
mical igniter (10 kJ used in the current work or 2 × 5 kJ as required by
EN 14034 series) could generate much higher energy/temperature and
higher initial turbulence than the spark ignitor (10 J used in Addai et al.
[23]). Therefore, the MEC tested by the chemical igniter is much lower
than the spark igniter. E.g., the MEC of the coal samples in air are as low
as 25 g/m3 in this work, while the MEC of starch sample in air can reach
to 250 g/m3 in Addai et al. [23].
In addition, at the low concentration of the methane, with in-
creasing concentration of coal dusts, the Pex of the hybrid mixtures
P. Zhao, et al. Fuel 260 (2020) 116401

Table 5
Pex (kPa), dp/dt (MPa/s) and tc (ms) of bituminous coal in air with small amount of flammable gas.
Flammable gas Con. (%) in air Dust concentration (g/m3)

40 30 25 20 15 10 5

Pex dp/dt tc Pex dp/dt tc Pex dp/dt tc Pex dp/dt tc Pex dp/dt tc Pex dp/dt tc Pex dp/dt tc

Air 0 387 37.4 55 348 26.9 65 319 10.2 94 218 5.7 94

CH4 0.57 401 24.6 56 364 11.7 59 – – – 307 7.5 72 264 8.9 113 230 8.1 75 – – –
1.14 – – – 365 6.4 58 – – – 338 8.8 65 301 6.9 72 267 6.8 105 226 6.1 86
1.71 473 18.4 45 – – – – – – 399 9.5 55 – – – 345 9 78 274 11.6 108
H2 0.57 385 15.8 53 321 5.5 92 – – – 299 12.9 78 263 10.5 108 198 6.4 106 – – –
1.14 407 14.3 52 – – – – – – 309 13.1 78 262 5.5 112 231 10.6 95 – – –
1.43 396 11.7 47 357 9.2 67 – – – 315 9.3 75 274 7.2 96 226 5 93 – – –
CO 0.57 375 9.6 55 326 6.9 86 – – – 272 5.4 105 196 4 105 – – – – – –
1.14 385 13 55 340 8.2 81 – – – 280 7.1 91 263 6.0 106 216 6.5 104 – – –
1.71 387 16.5 49 360 27.9 63 – – – 311 7.9 82 289 9.1 88 223 7.9 82 – – –

Fig. 11. Explosion regimes of anthracite coal and methane.

increases gradually. Obviously, with the increase of flammable gases
from 0 to 0.342 LELCH4, the location of the explosion points decreases
from MECdust to 0.2 MECdust, suggesting a significant promotion effect
of the presence of the flammable gases on the dust explosion.
Fig. 9 shows the explosion regimes of the hybrid mixture of bitu-
minous coal and hydrogen. Similar with the results of Fig. 8, the points
(0.14 LELH2/0.8 MECdust, 0.14 LELH2/0.6 MECdust, 0.29 LELH2/0.6
MECdust, 0.36 LELH2/0.6 MECdust) outside of the restricted area by the
Le Chatelier’s line or Barknecht’s curve show clear explosion. As coal
dust concentration increases, the Pex at a certain gas atmosphere in-
creases as a general trend, but this trend becomes uncertain and unclear
by varying the gas atmosphere, i.e. changing the concentration of CH4
or H2.
Fig. 10 reveals explosion regimes of bituminous coal and carbon
Fig. 12. Explosion regimes of anthracite coal and hydrogen.
monoxide. Clearly, all the tested points are distributed outside of the
restricted area by Le Chatelier’s line when the mole fraction of CO is no
more than 1.71%. Moreover, the points of 0.045 LELCO/0.8 MECdust,
0.09 LELCO/0.8 MECdust, 0.09 LELCO/0.6 MECdust, 0.14 LELCO/0.6
MECdust distributed outside of the restricted area by Barknecht’s curve.
It was also found that Pex shows monotonous dependence on the mole
fraction of CO, and the values of Pex below the MEC of coal dusts with
small amount of flammable gases are all smaller than the that of its pure
coal dust (i.e., 319 kPa). Compared with the other two flammable gases,
CO has a much higher LEL (10.9%, see in Table 1) resulting into lower
ratios of Xgas/LELgas.
The details of explosion severity parameters and combustion dura-
tion time of bituminous coal dust with small amount of CH4/H2/CO are

7
P. Zhao, et al. Fuel 260 (2020) 116401

suggests that the small amount of flammable gases have a stronger ef-
fect on the hybrid mixture with bituminous coal. In other words, the
explosion risk of hybrid mixture with bituminous coal is higher, which
is also supported by the explosion regimes of anthracite coal-H2 and
anthracite coal-CO shown in Figs. 12 and 13, respectively. A series of
explosions only occurred when the concentration of anthracite coal was
no less than 80% MECdust with H2 or CO, while this value is 60%
MECdust for bituminous coal as illustrated in Figs. 9 and 10. Unlike the
other two flammable gases, in the test zone where the concentration of
the coal dust below the MEC, the Pex of hybrid anthracite coal-CO
mixtures are always smaller than the value of pure coal dust at its MEC
shown in Fig. 13.
The details of explosion severity parameters and combustion dura-
tion time of anthracite coal dust with small amount of CH4/H2/CO are
listed in Table 6. It also shows that all the MECs determined by both
methods given in Section 3 agree each other well, which is consistent
with the findings of bituminous coal dust with small amount of flam-
mable gas. This may convince that both methods can be used to de-
termine the MEC of hybrid dust-gas mixture in the synergic explosion
region.

5. Conclusions

The effects of small amount of CH4/H2/CO on the explosion char-

Fig. 13. Explosion regimes of anthracite coal and carbon monoxide.
listed in Table 5. Interestingly, all the MECs determined by both
methods given in Section 3 are exactly the same, which suggests that
both methods can be used to determine the MEC of hybrid dust-gas
mixture in the synergic explosion region.
4.4. Results of hybrid mixtures with anthracite coal
Similar with Section 4.3, three diagrams representing different ex-
periment results are shown in Figs. 11–13 for the hybrid mixtures with
anthracite coal dust. The explosion regimes with Pex (kPa) of anthracite
coal and methane are shown in Fig. 11. Comparing with bituminous
coal shown in Fig. 8, the Pex of hybrid mixture with anthracite coal was
found to be smaller at the same condition, and the amount of explosion
points outside the restricted area by Le Chatelier’s line reduce. This
acteristics of two coal dusts have been studied in a 20-L standard ex-
plosion sphere with 10 kJ chemical igniters. Two methods based on
overpressure and combustion duration time were used to determine the
MEC of hybrid mixtures. The experimental results show that the pre-
sence of small amount of flammable gases poses a high explosion risk
for coal dusts below their MEC in air. As the flammable gas con-
centration increases, either the Pex and (dp/dt)ex increase or the MEC
decreases for all the hybrid mixtures of both two dust samples. At the
same concentration of coal dusts, the addition of CH4 has higher pro-
motion effects on coal dusts than the other two flammable gases. It was
found that the results of MEC determined by both methods agree each
other well, which reveals that both methods can be used to determine
MEC of hybrid mixture in the synergic explosion region. In addition, the
distribution of experimental data in the explosion region is quite dif-
ferent with the restricted area defined by empirical formulas, sug-
gesting that both Le Chatelier’s line and Bartknecht’s curve are in-
sufficient from safety considerations. These results improve our
understanding of the explosion risk of combustible dust in air with
small amount of flammable gas.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to

Table 6
Pex (kPa), dp/dt (MPa/s) and tc (ms) of anthracite coal in air with small amount of flammable gas.
Flammable gas con. (%) in air Dust concentration (g/m3)

40 30 25 20 15 10 5

Pex dp/dt tc Pex dp/dt tc Pex dp/dt tc Pex dp/dt tc Pex dp/dt tc Pex dp/dt tc Pex dp/dt tc

Air 0 349 25.1 66 278 8.4 65 271 9.5 105 222 7.2 86 – – – – – – – – –
CH4 0.57 359 13.1 64 335 12.2 66 268 6.1 99 224 7.5 87 – – – – – – – – –
1.14 – – – 328 2.2 58 – – – 305 2.6 71 298 4.3 83 244 2.7 108 – – –
1.71 482 10.3 73 437 12.4 62 – – – 383 10 74 – – – 334 10 91 267 11.7 110
H2 0.57 – – – 300 12.8 67 – – – 264 9.8 88 – – – – – – – – –
1.14 360 20 44 327 13.4 50 – – – 258 7.5 86 – – – – – – – – –
1.43 – – – – – – – – – 268 10.5 82 – – – – – – – – –
CO 0.57 313 9.7 65 281 7.5 95 – – – 257 6 106 190 5.8 102 – – – – – –
1.14 328 10.1 66 308 7.9 73 – – – 255 6.4 101 197 6.2 85 – – – – – –
1.71 366 10.4 66 331 10.2 75 – – – 258 7.7 105 238 11.6 101 – – – – – –

8
P. Zhao, et al.
influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the
National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2017YFC0804700), the
Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No.
2019SCUH0004), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No.
2018M640918) and the opening project of State Key Laboratory of
Explosion Science and Technology (No. KFJJ19-14M), Beijing Institute
of Technology. Valuable comments from anonymous reviewers are also
acknowledged.
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