Recently, China’s first intelligent continuous loading device for heavy trucks completed its trial operation at China Shenhua’s Yanbao Energy. This marks a key technological breakthrough in the field of intelligent, automatic bulk material truck loading in China, and represents a significant advance in coal bulk loading technology.
The device was jointly developed by Yanbao Energy and its partners. Historically, truck loading at open-pit coal mines has depended on manual positioning, requiring vehicles to start and stop repeatedly and adjust their positions multiple times. This places a heavy burden on drivers and creates safety risks due to the interaction of personnel and moving vehicles on site. Drawing on the parallel loading concept used in train marshaling, this innovative device dynamically adjusts truck travel speed to precisely synchronize the material discharge rate with the truck’s speed. The entire loading process requires no driver intervention for positioning, reducing driver workload, strengthening on-site safety, and effectively lowering the physical demands on frontline workers, while also improving the efficiency and quality of loading operations.
The device overcomes the challenges of operating in extremely cold regions, achieving an integrated process of vehicle self-propulsion and high-speed loading. The sequence of empty truck positioning, automated loading by weight, and loaded vehicle departure runs seamlessly from start to finish, addressing the longstanding industry problem of repeated stopping and starting in conventional loading operations. Overall loading efficiency is expected to increase by more than 50%. The device can either be integrated with existing truck loading stations or operate independently with the addition of an intelligent weighing module, completing weighing and loading in a single pass and upgrading the quantitative loading model for bulk materials.
As a key enterprise responsible for coal supply security in eastern Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Yanbao Energy is committed to driving mine transformation through innovation. Leveraging 5G, big data, and cloud computing, the Company systematically advances the digital transformation of the traditional coal industry, builds a development model characterized by “mechanization replacing manual labor, automation reducing headcount, and intelligence achieving unmanned operations”. A range of achievements have been put into practice, including remotely controlled mining equipment, 4D light-field naked-eye 3D operations, and autonomous locomotive loading systems. At the same time, the Company leverages technology to enable ecological restoration, jointly advances a microalgae carbon sequestration demonstration project and explores vegetation-free restoration approaches for waste dumps, thus making progress in both industrial upgrading and green governance.
