Structure optimization and coal breaking effect of air jet nozzle for post-mixed abrasive

Hydraulic pressure relief and penetration enhancement technology plays an important role in coal seam gas hozard control, but it is easy to lead to dynamic phenomena such as hole collapse, drill holding and hole spraying during its application in the soft coal seams. Non-hydraulic pressure relief and penetration enhancement is one of the feasible technologies to break through the bottleneck of efficient gas extraction technology in soft coal seams. To this end, the post-mixed abrasive air jet coal breaking and pressure relief technology was proposed with the efficient coal breaking capability of abrasive air jet. Specifically, the abrasive and air are conveyed to the bottomhole by two separate channels, and the post-mixed nozzle structure coupled with jet pump-Laval nozzle is adopted to eject, mix and accelerate the abrasive at the bottomhole, so that the abrasive has high impact kinetic energy to achieve efficient coal breaking. Based on ANSYS-FLUENT gas-solid two-phase flow model, the rule of abrasive ejection, mixing and acceleration in the post-mixing nozzle was analyzed, the force of abrasive particles in the acceleration process was studied, to obtain the optimal post-mixing nozzle structure for efficient coal breaking by mixed abrasive air jet. Besides, post-mixing abrasive gas jet coal breaking experiments were carried out to verify the coal breaking performance. The research results show that the impact kinetic energy of the abrasive is determined by the ejection and acceleration capacity of the post-mixing nozzle. The ejection capacity of the post-mixing nozzle is related to the outlet diameter of the ejecting nozzle and the length of its expansion section. A reasonable outlet diameter of ejection nozzle can help reduce the airflow fluctuation at nozzle outlet, while the length of the expansion section will affect the airflow velocity there. Herein, the two-stage nozzle is adopted, with the contraction section in 2 mm length, the throat in 2 mm diameter, the expansion section in 5 mm length, and the nozzle outlet in a 3 mm diameter. The acceleration effect of the acceleration structure on the abrasive mainly depends on the expansion ratio of the acceleration nozzle. Generally, the internal airflow of the nozzle at an expansion ratio of 1 makes the abrasive particles subjected to a larger resultant force, and the external abrasive of the acceleration nozzle subjected to the traction force, pressure gradient force and virtual mass force with less fluctuation, with obvious abrasive acceleration effect. Conclusively, the acceleration nozzle is designed with a contraction tube with 4 mm length and 7.73 mm outlet diameter, a 40 mm long throat, and a 15 mm long expansion tube at the expansion ratio of 1. On this basis, a coal breaking capacity experiment was conducted with the optimized nozzle structure. Meanwhile, the erosion experiment was carried out at the ejection pressure of 4 MPa, target distance of 60 cm, and abrasive mass flow of 50 g/s. After 30 s of erosion, an erosion pits of about 10 cm in diameter and 5 cm in depth was produced by the optimized post-mixing nozzle structure on the coal blocks. Thus, it is proved that the system has good coal breaking effect with the designed parameters of the optimal post-mixing nozzle structure and has the capability of engineering application.