Prospects for Full-Face Heading Machines in Bituminous Coal Mining in Germany

摘要

Full-face heading machines are being used for driving horizontal stone drifts in bituminous coal mining in Germany. Since such driving operations generally do not reach lengths necessary to fully depreciate the machine, the future operation of full-face heading machines depends on the whole on the nature and scope of development work being done in bituminous coal mining. A survey has been carried out of the driving operations along horizontal stone drifts longer than 1 km planned for the next two decades, and the possibility of fully mechanized driving has been examined. Since the roadways surveyed concerned only development work to keep up production capacity, we can assume that the scope of driving operations will be maintained, provided there is no significant decline in production capacity in bituminous coal mining in West Germany. It was found that the cross sections of the planned roadways can be grouped according to diameter, and that a few machine sizes, characterized by different borehole diameters, can be derived from those groups. The projects covered by the survey are ordered such that, for the machines of the same diameter, a sequence of driving operations is established to approximate their expected useful life as closely as possible. Three machines would suffice for the estimated 45 to 65 km required roadways longer than 3 km. However, the suitability of the boring technique for a particular project is a question of the attendant costs and thus of its competitiveness with respect to the conventional blasting technique. This question can be decided only from case to case. (ERA citation 05:004004)