Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
V.M.S.R.Murthy
Department of Mining Engineering, Indian School of Mines University, Dhanbad,
Jharkhand, India, e-mail:vmsr_murthy@yahoo.com
INTRODUCTION
The history of mineral development is as old as the civilization. In case of India, the mineral
production dates back to the ancient times as the mining activities can be traced as far back as
6,000 years or so. The importance of mineral development for the economic growth of a country
was realized in India long back. As early as 400 B.C. Chanakya in his “Kautilya’s Arthasastra”
mentioned “Mines are the sources of treasury, from treasury comes the power of Government and
the Earth whose armament is by means of treasury and army”. The remains of some of the old mine
workings are a witness to this fact. A few of these workings have led to the discovery of a number
of significant mineral deposits, which are being worked in the present time. These include the lead-
zinc deposit at Zawar, copper deposit at Khetri, and gold deposits in Karnataka ( Sen, 2007). India
proudly hosts different mining methods and the predominant one being the bord and pillar mining.
Of late longwall mining and blasting gallery techniques are getting popular with increased
production records being achieved. The lecture presents the coal mining history of India with a
short description of two major techniques practiced world-wide alongwith some recent
developments such as Top coal caving and highwall mining.
Foreign Collaboration
India has set up Joint Working Groups with UK, France, China, Germany, erstwhile USSR, Canada
and Australia to identify areas and projects for bilateral cooperation. The inflow of Foreign Direct
Investment is expected to double within the next two years. The Sixth Session of Indo-China
Working Group was held recently at Beijing on 15th-17th February, 2000. Both sides agreed to
implement cooperation in the following aspects.
¾ Exchange on coal mining technology and information.
¾ Exchange on the monitoring system of coal safety.
¾ Exchange on the coal industry policies and regulations
¾ Development and utilisation of coal bed methane.
¾ Technology of clean coal especially by coal liquification and gasification and dry washing.
¾ Hard roof management for Churcha/Churcha west coal mines.
¾ Spare parts warehouse in India by CME.
¾ The co-manufacture of spare parts of longwall machinery introduced in India.
¾ Annual Maintenance Contract.
¾ Recovering the coal pillar by short long wall technology.
¾ Explore the possibility of offering new project on either side.
Export and Import
Presently, India is not a major exporter of coal and essentially caters to the demands of
neighbouring countries like Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan. However, there are no restrictions on
coal exports under the existing Export-Import Policy of India. India imports small quantities of low
ash-content coal principally for use by steel plants, which blend it with Indian coal. Import duties
are low and are expected to be lowered further. (www.diehardindian.com/infra/coal.htm).
Bord and pillar/room and pillar techniques have been quite popular and are well practised over two
centuries from now. They provide flexibility in operations with multiple faces being put to
operation for production. Geological disturbance(folds, faults, dykes, sills) could be avoided for
minimizing their impact on ground stability. Since the production and productivity are below the
much needed different alternative mining systems have been tried. Out of which the fully
mechanized longwall mining has proved to be much more productive, safe and easy to automate
requiring less manpower
Bord and pillar mining essentially involves development and extraction of coal pillars in a chess
board pattern. Pillars formed during development (by driving criss-cross roads and their extraction
in a sequence as shown in Fig.3 constitutes bord and pillar mining.
Pillar designed always require to be monitored as per the statute(DGMS). Typical instrumentation
scheme in galleries during pillar extraction is shown in Fig.6.
Instrumented bolt
Stress Meter
Load cell
Reference peg
in floor Telescopic convergence rod
Fig.7 - Continuous miner drum in position to cut coal in room and pillar mining
Use of breaker line supports (rock bolts) as experimented by CMRI are shown in Fig.8.
Breakerline before goaf Breakerline after goaf
Fig.8 – Breaker line supports used in bord and pillar mines, SECL, India
LONGWALL MINING
Longwall mining has found a serious application since 1970s with booming equipment industry
around Europe and USA. India too had ambitious plans to increase the number of longwall faces to
a triple digit by 2000 when the same was initially introduced in 1978. The technology is a mixed
success in India and presently only a dozen of faces are producing coal from age old equipment.
The SCCL has implemented Chinese longwall equipment package and has achieved a reasonable
success over the past decade. The very advantage of this technology is its ability to meet higher
productions with unmatched safety records coupled with least manpower. More over their
application becomes more or less mandatory in deep seated deposits(say more than 300 m) as the
size of the pillar (in Bord and Pillar mining)becomes too large leading to lower recovery, lesser
productivity etc.). However, the same technology has flourished leaps and bounds in Australia, USA
and South Africa. Typical productions achieved with different mining technologies in Australia are
shown in Fig.9.
Fig.9 – Contribution of different mining technologies in Australia
The increasing trend in longwall production is evident against a decresing trend in room and pillar
trend. India too needs to look at these options for meeting the ever increasing gap between
demand and coal supply.The major coal producers of Australia with their export potential is shown
in Fig.10.
HIGHWALL MINING
Highwall mining is a new technique of extracting coal locked from an existing surface mine as
shown in Fig.17. It essentially involves application of a longwall technology .
The yardstick used for classifying seams as “thick” or “thin” shows wide variations arising mainly
from different mining practices adopted in the coal basins of the world. Attempts to bring about a
uniformity by proposing new definitions have so far proved futile. Some engineers hold that a seam
should be considered thick if it falls beyond the thickness range in which maximum face
productivity can be obtained using existing mining systems. This yardstick of productivity, however,
fails to provide a basis for universal classification. For instance, in semi-mechanised mining
systems, productivity begins to fall off at a extraction height of about 2.5 m, mainly due to
difficulties in setting supports. With fully mechanised systems, no perceptible drop in productivity
may be noticed upto a working height of 3.5 m or 4.0 m . Thus, no clear line of demarcation can be
drawn on this basis as it is dependent upon the state of mechanisation and the mining technique
used. A more acceptable and logical definition would be to consider a seam as thick if it has to be
worked in more than one lift. Here again, the thickness limit for single-lift extraction will depend
upon the mining method used and the state of technology. For instance, the maximum height of
single-lift extraction allowed in bord and pillar workings in Indian mines is 4.5 m. In other
countries, this figure may be less or more. Similarly, longwall faces 3.5 m to 4.0 m high are worked
in several countries while 5.0 m high faces have been worked in some areas. Equipment packages
are currently available for even 6.0 m high faces and such faces may be worked in the near future.
Thus, the concept of what constitutes a thick seam will be a continuing debate and data on thick
seam reserves, production, etc. from different parts of the world will continue to suffer from lack
of standardisation.
Reserves in thick seams : Of the total world coal reserves of about 20,000 Bt, more than 30% are
estimated to be in seams thicker than 4.0 m. About half of such thick seam reserves will need to be
worked by underground methods. In some countries, notably China, India, Turkey, Russia and Czech
Republic, there is a preponderance of thick seams and in these countries the reserves in thick
seams vary from 50% to 75% of the total reserves.Problems of mining thick seams : Mining of thick
coal seams by underground methods has for long constituted a major technological challenge to
mining engineers to world over. Classical methods, beset with many problems, continue to
dominate the world mining scene. Improvements in equipment design have marginally advanced the
winning and support systems, but there have been no major conceptual breakthroughs in the
technology of thick seam extraction. The traditional methods are more or less site specific and no
ready solutions are available for use in a given set of conditions. In most situations, individually
tailored methods are necessary. Major problems associated with thick seam mining may be
identified as follows :
i) Problem of excessive coal losses which may vary widely depending upon site conditions. The
overall recovery rarely exceeds 40 - 50% of in-situ reserves.
ii) As an inevitable consequence, problems of spontaneous heating in the goaf are rampant.
iii) Problems of ground control and support with attendant dangers of roof-falls, overriding of
pillars, premature collapses and air-blasts are also common. The redistribution of strata
pressures over larger voids results in heavy pressures on roof supports and also higher volume of
surface subsidence.
iv) Production rates and levels of productivity are by and large low.
In the absence of any better or cheaper method, thick seams in the past were invariably worked in
the bord and pillar system. Seams upto about 7 m in thickness had generally been developed in one
section (mostly along the floor); thicker seams were developed in two or more sections, leaving
partings between the sections. Little thought was given to the method of extracting the pillars thus
formed with the result that huge reserves of coal were sterilised in such developed workings which
defy extraction by any known method. Extraction or reduction of pillars in such multi-section
workings was invariably done in conjunction with hydraulic sandstowing as stowing was considered
necessary for both conservation and safety. Caving methods were allowed to be used only where
sand was not available and the coal was of poor quality. In a majority of the cases, only partial
extraction was done with stowing. A sample survey of multi-section workings in the Jharia coalfield
indicated that the overall recovery varied between 35% and 60%.
Another stipulation of Regulation 104 is that the pillars and galleries in one section shall be
vertically above or below the pillars and galleries in the other section. In a majority of cases,
vertical coincidence of pillars was maintained; however, in many cases, because of wanton
development, or errors in surveying, or even indiscriminate widening of galleries subsequently,
such vertical coincidence was not maintained thereby creating problems of instability.
Depillaring
Very few of the seams developed in multi-sections were depillared. A majority of such developed
workings were left unextracted for lack of a suitable method of depillaring. It was also mandated
that thick seams had to be extracted with full stowing of the voids to ensure high recovery. Caving
was permitted only in such cases where sand was not available for stowing and the coal was of poor
grade. The commonly used depillaring methods are described below.
Seams developed in two sections : Where a seam had been developed in two sections, both sections
were extracted simultaneously keeping the top and bottom faces in the same vertical plane. The
caving line of the lower section was kept vertically below the line of fracture in the top section.
Withdrawal of supports from the worked out areas in the two sections also had to be done
simultaneously. If the top section supports were withdrawn before those in the lower section, roof
fall in the top section could puncture the intervening parting and affect bottom section supports. If
bottom section supports were withdrawn first, the parting would have collapsed and top section
supports would be lost.
In order to ensure that working faces in the two sections were maintained in the same vertical
plane and withdrawal of supports was carried out simultaneously, the two sections were placed
under charge of the same supervisors and inter-connections between the sections were provided at
every alternate junction of galleries so that supervisors could keep a close watch on progress of
work in the two sections.This method of extraction, however, could not be used in seams where
pillars and galleries in the two sections were not vertically coincident. In such cases, there was a
serious risk of over-riding of pillars. Extraction of pillars with caving in seams developed in two
sections resulted in complete loss of the coal contained in the intervening parting and this left over
coal often created problems of spontaneous fires in the goaf.
CONCLUSION
Underground coal mining methods being practised world over have been presented in short with
their relative advantages and issues of importance. Success of modern technology needs an intense
effort in the following frontier areas to avoid geological surprises and achieve target production.
• Geological modelling
• 3D Visualisation
• Geotechnical
• Roadway development
• Longwall mining
• Highwall mining
• New mining methods
• Gas control and Heatings control
• Automation
REFERENCES
Winkel, R.M., (2003), Analysis of longwall development systems in Australian hard coal mines-
Bench marking and optimization, BGMR, Aachen, Germany