Empirical Formulae for Determining Pressure Drop Across a 20-Layer Flooded-Bed Scrubber Screen Sampurna Arya 1 & Thomas Novak 2 & Kozo Saito 3 & Adam Levy 2 & Joseph Sottile 2 Received: 14 December 2018 /Accepted: 28 May 2019 # Society for Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration Inc. 2019 Abstract The use of a woven wire-mesh screen as part of a flooded-bed dust-scrubbing system is very popular in the underground coal mining industry. It is used in combination with a demister (mist eliminator) to remove dust from the dust-laden air. A study was conducted to measure the pressure drop across a flooded-bed wire-mesh screen at different airflow rates in one- phase (dry) and two-phase (wet) conditions. Two empirical relationships between pressure drop and air velocity were developed for dry and wet conditions, respectively. In both cases, the form of the empirical relationships was found to be similar to relationships given by Sabri Ergun for high velocity non-Darcy single and multi-phase flow through porous media. The experiments were repeated on a reduced-scale model of the wire-mesh screen, and the pressure-velocity relationships obtained from the full-scale prototype experiments were tested. The test results show validation of the full-scale empirical formulas on the small-scale model with an insignificant variation. This paper presents the empirical equations for pressure drop across the wire-mesh screen in dry and wet conditions. Researchers can use these equations as a tool to predict total pressure drops for wire-mesh screens of different scale sizes. Keywords Dust control . Dust scrubber . Flooded-bed scrubber . Wire-mesh screen . Prototype . Scale model Nomenclature ∇p Pressure gradient (Pa) μ Dynamic viscosity (Pa s) v Superficial velocity (m/s) ρ Air density (kg/m 3 ) K Intrinsic permeability (m 2 ) k Relative permeability (m 2 ) η Intrinsic passability (m) Y Inertial factor α Scale factor l Characteristic length (m) g Acceleration of gravity (m/s 2 ) F i Inertia force of air (N) F g Gravitational force on airflow (N) C c Orifice coefficient d Hydraulic dia. reduced scale (m) D Hydraulic dia. prototype (m) A 1 Area of wind tunnel (m 2 ) A 2 Area of wire mesh (m 2 ) X Shock loss (Pa) 1 Introduction Efficiently removing dust from the air at its generation point in an underground coal mine greatly reduces worker exposure to high dust concentrations. In the USA, most continuous miners (~ 75%) employ machine-mounted flooded-bed scrubbers to * Sampurna Arya sampurna.arya@gmail.com Thomas Novak thomas.novak@uky.edu Kozo Saito k.saito@uky.edu Adam Levy adam.levy@uky.edu Joseph Sottile joseph.sottile@uky.edu 1 Department of Mining & Geological Engineering, University of Alaska Fairbanks, 1760 Tanana Loop, 305 Duckering, Fairbanks, AK 99775, USA 2 Department of Mining Engineering, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA 3 Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration https://doi.org/10.1007/s42461-019-0091-5