The coal industry enters a new era of precision mining

From January to July this year, my country's coal consumption increased slightly by about 3.4% year-on-year. Although there was a slight rebound, compared with the peak level in 2013, the long-term decline in coal consumption is the general trend.

We should not always think that the decline in the proportion of coal consumption is a bad thing for the coal industry. We should continue to adhere to the development ideas of conservation, cleanness and safety, focus on precise coal mining, clean and efficient utilization, and strive to use the smallest number of coal mines, the smallest mining area The minimum coal consumption supports China's energy demand. In consideration of safety in production, ecological environment, and energy conservation and consumption reduction, my country's coal industry must continue to promote efficient recovery of coal resources and energy conservation strategies. This means that the coal industry is undergoing a major transition period, gradually entering a new era of safe, intelligent and precise mining.

Green coal resources are only enough for forty to fifty years

The basic national conditions of my country's coal are complex resource endowments. The distribution of coal resources varies greatly. Very thin coal seams and extra thick coal seams, as well as near horizontal and steeply inclined coal seams are widely distributed, and mining conditions are extremely complex. Coal mining is seriously threatened by disasters such as coal and gas outbursts, rock bursts, coal spontaneous combustion, water damage, and dust, making safe mining difficult.

Among my country's proven coal resources, 53% are buried below 1,000 meters. With the depletion of shallow resources, coal mining depth is increasing at an average annual rate of 10-25 meters, and the safety of deep coal resources is a huge threat. Disasters such as deep gas and rock burst are coupled with each other. The disaster mechanism is complicated and prevention and cure are more difficult.

In the process of coal mining, the phenomenon of "abandoning thin and thick, picking and picking thin" is common. The average recovery rate of mine resources is only about 50%, which is a large gap with the recovery rate of about 80% in developed countries, resulting in a shortened service life of 80-100 years in the original design half. In the field of energy conservation, coal production consumes a lot of energy per ton of coal. In 2012, the electricity consumption of raw coal production was 28.4 kWh/ton, and the comprehensive energy consumption of coal production was 17.1 kg standard coal/ton.

In recent years, relying on scientific and technological progress, the situation of coal mining safety has continued to improve: while my country’s coal production has been increasing year by year (from 1.3 billion tons in 2000 to 3.54 billion tons in 2017, an increase of 172.3%), the death rate per million tons From 2.76 in 2005 to 0.106 in 2017.

However, the situation of safe coal mining is still grim: Although the accident rate of coal mine gas, roof, and water damage has dropped significantly year by year, serious accidents still occur from time to time, and the social impact is bad; the death rate per million tons of coal mines still exists compared with developed countries in the world The big gap is currently 5 times that of the United States and 11 times that of Australia.

To solve these problems, it is necessary to "knock the knife inward" and promote the development of green coal resources with precise development methods, while protecting resources, lives and the environment to the maximum extent. The amount of green coal resources refers to the amount of coal resources that can meet the comprehensive conditions of coal safety, technology, economy, and environment, and support scientific coal production capacity and scientific development. Based on the current technical conditions, the amount of green coal resources available for mining in my country is extremely limited, only 504.895 billion tons, which is less than half of the proven coal reserves and one-tenth of the nation’s predicted coal resources of 597 million tons. According to the national energy demand and coal resource recovery status, green coal resources can only be mined for 40-50 years. In the future, large areas may be mined in non-green coal resource storage areas, and coal mine safety is bound to face huge problems.

Safe, smart and accurate

In 2016, the author first proposed the scientific concept of "precise coal mining", which triggered widespread heated discussions both inside and outside the industry. On August 8, 2017, the "Coal Safety, Intelligent and Precision Mining Collaborative Innovation Organization" was established and unveiled at Huainan University of Technology. Today, safe, intelligent and precise mining of coal is the only way for mining in the future, which has become the consensus of the industry.

"Coal precision mining" is a future mining technology that integrates unmanned (small-person) intelligent coal mining and disaster prevention and control that takes into account the impact of coal mining disturbances and disaster-causing factors. Its scientific connotation is based on transparent space geophysics, with multi-physics coupling, intelligent perception, intelligent control, Internet of Things, big data, cloud computing and other information as technical support, with risk identification, monitoring and early warning and disposal functions and other safe mining Intelligent unmanned safe mining supported by technology.

With the development of the new situation, "precise coal mining" has added new connotations.

First of all, we must consider the realization of precision mining in terms of safety. If the safety issues cannot be solved, the rest is like a tree without roots.

Secondly, we must realize intelligence. In the past, my country’s coal mines could not talk about intelligence at all, and there was a big gap between even the most basic mechanization. The average coal mining mechanization degree was only 45%, and that of key state-owned enterprises was 82.7%. Compared with other industries, coal mine informatization, unmanned and intelligent level is still in its infancy. In the future, the coal industry must be upgraded from high-risk labor-intensive to high-precision technology-intensive: each mine has less than 100 people, 90% of them work on the ground, and 10% of them work underground for production preparation and inspection; informatization, The automation, intelligence level, recovery rate, efficiency and other indicators will reach a higher level.

But intelligence alone is still not enough. The ultimate goal is to achieve precise mining, to be foreseeable about coal resources and the conditions after mining, and to perceive the operation of machinery and systems in the mining process in real time, reaching the same level as aerospace.

From the perspective of the technical route, precision mining has its own roadmap: the first step, before 2035, is the remote-control unmanned mining stage combining ground and underground, enabling operators to remotely intervene in the operation of remote control equipment and mining work in the monitoring center Unmanned operation in the coal mining area; the second step, from 2035 to 2050, truly realize intelligent unmanned precise mining, breaking through the intelligence and informatization of remote ground control, visualization of unmanned coal mining and intelligent perception, and intelligent disaster monitoring and early warning And prevention and other technologies.

Nowadays, coal mining has gradually evolved from traditional human mines and mechanical mines to information mines and digital mines to smart mines. Safe, intelligent and precise mining is becoming a reality. According to statistics, since the successful test of the first unmanned mining face—the 1001 face of Huangling No. 1 Coal Mine, more than 70 coal mining faces in my country have realized intelligent unmanned mining. The intelligent unmanned mining, which has been expected by generations of coal people, has turned a dream into reality.

Strengthen the collaborative innovation of industry, university and research

At present, the development of precision coal mining still faces many challenges. The main manifestations are the immature research on the management of multiple coal and rock dynamic coupling disasters, the lack of dynamic intelligent comprehensive detection technology for hidden hazards, and the early warning platform and new technology of coal mine major disasters based on big data. Research has not yet been carried out and other aspects.

For this reason, the coal safety intelligent and precise mining mode needs to research and break through the following key technologies as soon as possible: First, it is necessary to accurately grasp the conditions of coal seams, realize high-definition perspectives of geological structures, collapse columns, gas and other hazards, and create a perspective function "Internet + mine" supported by geophysical science; second, it is necessary to develop new safe, sensitive and reliable stope, mining area and disaster precursors and other information collection and sensing technology and equipment to form a comprehensive collection of man-machine environment parameters and a common network New methods of transmission; the third is to break through the problems of multi-source heterogeneous data fusion and knowledge mining, and to create a shared rapid analysis model and algorithm for precision coal mining and disaster warning monitoring data; the fourth is to use the "trinity" scientific research method to study coal mine disasters Disaster-causing mechanism and catastrophe theory model to realize adaptive, advanced and accurate warning of coal mine disasters; Fifth, it is necessary to explore the construction method of multi-field coupling compound disaster knowledge base, and establish a disaster warning characteristic cloud platform suitable for regional coal mining conditions; Sixth, based on the shearer memory cutting, hydraulic support automatic follow-up and visual remote monitoring, etc., with the intelligent control software of the production system as the core, the research and development of remote controllable unmanned precision mining technology and equipment; seven is to integrate computers Network technology, modern control technology, and cloud computing technology are integrated, and Internet technology is applied to cloud mine construction, turning coal resource development into intelligent projects or workshops, and building intelligent mines based on cloud technology.

In coal science and technology innovation, there is a dead end without the collaboration of production, education and research. Because the advantages of all parties can complement each other: colleges and universities are mainly engaged in basic research, scientific research institutions are mainly engaged in the research and development of technical equipment, and large coal enterprises are mainly engaged in the application and promotion of results and the construction of demonstration projects to form a collaborative innovation system of industry, academia, and research. Only by exhibiting their strengths, cooperating in innovation, and jointly tackling key problems can they solve problems and lead the industry. If they do their own work, one professor, one team, and one unit, one team, it is difficult to achieve innovation.

Since the establishment of the "Coal Safety Intelligent and Precision Mining Collaborative Innovation Organization", it has been committed to promoting the transformation of coal safe, intelligent and precise mining from a scientific idea to a theoretical and technical reality. At present, the organization has been researching, transforming and demonstrating, and has basically realized the precise co-mining of coal and gas, and has made major breakthroughs in automatic follow-up of hydraulic supports, memory cutting of coal shears, and video monitoring technology and equipment of working faces. . Through the collaborative innovation of industry, university and research, the organization member units have made significant progress in the fields of information intelligent sensor transmission, Internet + big data information processing, disaster intelligent warning and prevention and control, and intelligent mining technology and equipment.

Facing the future, it is recommended that the competent government departments pay more attention to technological innovation in the coal industry, lead the future development of resource science and technology with precision coal mining, and strive to support the country's 2.5 billion-3 billion tons of coal demand with the minimum number of mines and mining area in the future.

This article is transferred from China Coal News Network

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