China’s First Steeply Inclined Short-wall Intelligent Coal Mining Face Put into Use

Wudong Coal Mine under the Xinjiang branch of China Energy officially put into use China’s first steeply inclined short-wall intelligent coal mining face on August 31. This move aimed to promote the application of intelligent technologies in coal mining and create an intelligent mining face that adapts to the geological features of coal mines in Xinjiang.

A steeply inclined short-wall intelligent coal mining face.

Wudong Coal Mine boasts steeply inclined thick coal seams and is one of the 15 demonstration coal mines in China. For a long time, it has used single-ended shearer short-wall mining technology. Based on the complicated geological conditions of local coal seams and the unique features of short-wall mining face, the mine carried out a technical upgrade of its single-ended shearers in the past six months, completing the optimization of core technologies such as DSP control and achieving memory mining, automatic tracking and conversion, one-key start/stop of equipment like hydraulic stands, and balanced coal flow speed adjustment. The mining face can achieve automatic and remote-controlled coal release, marking that major technical breakthroughs have been made.

Compared to traditional mechanized coal mining, the intelligent mining face helps the number of workers in each shift drop from 14 to nine and the entire coal mining team from 92 to 65, saving manpower by 29 percent. Moreover, it can significantly enhance work safety. So far, the mining face is in smooth operation, which laid a solid foundation for the company to develop intelligent mining.