Surface miners-future perspective of opencast coal mining

摘要

Coal will continue to play a major role for meetingthe demands of energy requirements. The projected consumptionpatterns are of very tall order in the years to come. Productionlevels are to be stepped up with heavy earth moving machineries.Major opencast coal mines are exploiting power grade coals fromthe highly interbanded thick seams of generally poor grades.Many of these opencast mines are posing environmental threatsdue to their close vicinity to inhabitation, forest lands and otherinfrastructures. Indian coal industry has to look for new vistas inre-engineering and technological reorientation. An eco-friendlyopencast mining using continuous surface miners can beconsidered as a viable alternative which will improve the qualityof coal and also productivity and cost effectiveness. The paperhighlights on various models of surface miners available for theindustry, some of which have already been put into practiceelsewhere in the world. The paper also focuses on the advantagesof deploying continuous surface miners especially in opencast coal mining.