MECHANISED COAL
Specialists of the Corum Group engineering and technical centre optimised the design of the KD90T 17.5 / 28 roof support to the customer ’ s conditions and agreed on the technical conditions for the tests , the company said . The supports were manufactured at the Korum Druzhkivsky Machine-Building Plant with shipment to the client expected shortly .
Imbat Madencilik ’ s General Manager , Yavuz Burbut , said : “ Corum experts paid a lot of attention to the issues that arise with our current fleet of mechanised roof supports from Poland and China , asked questions about the problems and suggested ways to solve them . That ’ s why we decided to try and test Corum products .”
In Russia , meanwhile , China Coal Beijing Coal Mining Machinery Co Ltd ( BMJ ) recently delivered a new set of 175 hydraulic roof supports to EVRAZ-controlled Raspadskaya .
The supports are for mining the number 48 seam in the Uskovskaya coal mine , which began operating in February . The working face length of this seam is 300 m with support height ranging from 1.7 m to 3.8 m and support capacity of 10,600 kN .
Uskovskaya mine extracts GZh-grade coking coal , which , upon washing at the Kuznetskaya and Abashevskaya washing plants , is shipped to EVRAZ steel mills . The average production is 2.5 Mt / y .
The mine has been implementing its seam 48 access and development project since 2018 with other equipment acquired to further its longwall
endeavours including two new Komatsu Joy shearers .
The seam ’ s first longwall is expected to produce up to 6,000 t / d of coal , with the first longwall expected to be mined out by October .
Coal development
It ’ s not just Anglo American making headway in mine development within the coal sector .
China ’ s Northern Heavy Industries ( NHI ), part of Fangda Group and based in Shenyang , Liaoning Province , says it is creating a new era for the development of coal mining equipment in China with the use of tunnel boring machines ( TBMs ).
China is rich in coal resources , yet these are often located at significant depths with complicated geological conditions . The application of the traditional drill and blast method , or roadheader excavation , often comes with slow progress , high cost , a poor working environment and poor tunnel formation in these conditions , according to NHI .
As a result , the company has increasingly been applying TBMs in China ’ s coal industry in recent years .
In 2014 , a TBM with a diameter of 4.53 m was developed for rock roadways in the Zhangji mine of Huainan Mining Group in Anhui Province . In 2015 , it successfully advanced 2 km at a depth of 500 m underground , achieving a new record in coal mine rock roadway construction in the process – the highest daily advance being 30.7 m and average monthly advance being 404 m . The highest daily advance was 10 times higher than traditional technologies and the monthly advance fourand-a-half times higher , NHI said .
A 6.33 m large-diameter full-section TBM for coal mine rock roadways was then successfully fabricated by NHI in April 2019 . This machine was specifically designed for Shandong Energy ’ s New Dragon coal mine in the Xinjulong mining area .
A TBM with a diameter of 4.53 m destined for the Xinyuan mine of Yangquan Coal Group was delivered in December 2019 , which included further design and construction improvements on the two previously delivered machines .
The latest TBMs from NHI , referred to as semicoal rock TBMs , can change from cutting rock strata to half coal and half rock ( often found where there is rock in development areas with many thin coal seams ) where needed .
In May 2020 , one of these machines was delivered to the Zhaizhen coal mine of Xinwen Mining Group , also part of Shandong Energy . The “ Xinwen One ” full-section semi-coal rock TBM has now been commissioned and is in full