By August 17, 2020, the 303-1 long wall face had advanced for 187.4 meters at the head and 188 meters at the tail in the Shigetai Coal Mine of Shendong Coal Group, marking that China’s first contour mining equipment achieved automatic operation.
During the process from installation to commissioning of the contour mining equipment, technicians solved problems such as loader chain jumping and upgraded the two-sided cutting program. Through continuous improvements and upgrades, the equipment achieved automatic mining. Instead of traditional coal mining method, it achieves vertical cutting both at the head and tail through intelligent control of equipment such as the roof supports, shearers and self-moving tail. With the intervention of intelligent patrol inspection devices, the long wall mining face can achieve automatic production.
“The 303-1 long wall mining face can complete cutting at both ends in two minutes,” said Wang Gaowei, head of the No.2 Mining Team in the Shigetai Coal Mine. “With this device, we set a record by completing 15 cuttings in a single shift. Its cutting speed is several times faster than that of traditional angle-cutting devices, thus significantly increasing the mining efficiency. Now it needs only two controllers and three patrolmen to complete production.”
The device not only fills a blank of automatic contour mining equipment for thin coal seam mining in China, but also provides useful references for automatic, safe, and high-efficiency mining in the company’s thin coal seams with recoverable reserves amounting to 957 million tons.
