MineLoc — Personnel Tracking System for Longwall Coal Mining Sites

Automation in Longwall Coal Mining - A Review

Coal is an important fossil fuel and will also be for the next decades [1]. The only way to achieve the challenges faced by the coal industry is to reduce production costs by improving productivity. Improvement of productivity has become an important goal for today’s coal industry in the race to increase price competitiveness. In recent years, underground mining method is becoming popular becau...

An Innovative Longwall Mining Technology in Tangshan Coal Mine, China

In mining of inclined coal seams in Tangshan coal mine of Kailuan group, gateways on either end of a panel were both typically located along the floor and a gateway pillar between adjoining panels was left unmined between adjacent panels to ensure stability, thus forming a planar mining system. According to the practice, however, it turned out that this conventional mining system has long-stand...

Distributed Radio Positioning for Personnel Tracking in Coal Mine Tunnels

Received signal strength-based positioning and tracking of humans is a reliable solution for harsh indoor environments like the longwall tunnels at underground coal mining sites. The mining personnel with radio tags on their body can be tracked along a line of sensing reference nodes. The wired bus backbone for the transmission of all sensor data to a central processing station is the limiting ...

A Novel Longwall Mining Layout Approach for Extraction of Deep Coal Deposits

As more easily mined deposits are depleted, the reserves are becoming more limited and less favorable. Deposits of coal or trona that are being longwall mined are deep and are getting deeper. Coal bursts and bumps frequently occur within development entries in longwall mining of deep mines due to high stresses. This paper presents a novel patented longwall mining layout “Longwall Mining with Sp...

A robotic system for underground coal mining