Lei Pan is involved in a multidisciplinary project to improve the efficiency of dust scrubbers in mining operations.
His work and that of Virginia Tech researchers and collaborators from Cornell University incorporates new materials that better collect dust and use the continuous miner’s vibrations to help keep the filters from clogging as often.
In 2019 Pan received funding from the Center for Disease Control for the project “Temporal and Spatial Characterization of Respirable Coal Mine Dust Using Area Monitoring Devices and X-Ray CT.”
Mining dust was also the topic of a Michigan Tech URIP (Undergraduate Research Internship Program) project with chemical engineering major Caroline Inaury, funded by the Portage Health Foundation.