VENTURIS VENTILATE AND CONTROL DUST.

Several years of research at U. S. Steel's Monroeville, Pa. , laboratories have produced a water spray system for underground face equipment that should lead to solving the nagging problem of proper face ventilation. These systems, which work on a simple venturi principle, significantly improve dust suppression by creating uniform, highly directable water spray patterns and by efficiency atomizing water particles to sizes roughly one-third that achieved with standard nozzles. The U. S. Steel Co. and several other coal mining companies have experimented extensively with the new water spray systems on continuous miners, and found that they measurably improved dust and methane control, even in longwall sections. Design, components and operation of these systems are detailed.