LONGWALL MINING

The reasons that longwalls have become the most productive in the world within the
10- to 15-year period since its introduction from Europe, are as follows:

1 Favorable geological conditions – Coal seams are flat, fairly uniform and
shallower, mostly less than 640 m, and the roof strata are generally easy to cave.

2 Excellent mining plan and equipment layout – employing of multi-entry gate-

roads development using continuous miners, which allows rapid gate-roads
development, and the layout creates minimum abutment pressure interaction
between adjacent panels.

3 State-of-the-art equipment – All equipment are heavy duty and highly reliable.
Individual subsystem reliability is greater than 90% without, increasing to close to
100%, with industry/OEM partnership services programs.
4 Highly efficient method of face move – For a 366 m wide panel, a complete face
move can be done in five to seven days (Note, normally the shearer and AFC and
stage loader are pre-installed in a new face.). A complete face move is up to two
weeks.

5 Excellent management and skilled work force in a highly competitive world

market.

6 Production and safety incentive programs.

The current longwall mining method has the following unique features

1. The process uses a retreating longwall mining method with natural roof caving
in the gob.

2. All longwalls are single slice or single seam and operate in flat or nearly flat coal
seams.

3. Panel development uses the room-and-pillar method in which multiple entries

(two to four entries, mostly three entries) are developed simultaneously in-seam
in a rectangular shape by continuous miners. Those multiple entries are parallel
to each other and interconnected by crosscuts at fixed intervals. Chain pillars
between those entries are left unmined. All entries are roof-bolted in cycle
(primary support) and/or supplemented with additional supports (supplementary
support) later. These features allow fast mine, and especially panel,
development.
4. Generally, seam height is the mining height and/or entry height. However, since
the proven longwall face equipment is most convenient to operate with the
minimum height greater than 1.65–1.78 m in range, longwall mining in seams
thinner than this usually involves cutting into roof or floor or both (mostly roof)
in order to make the height. Therefore, it is not unusual that clean coal recovery
is as low as 30% of run-of mine raw coal.

5. All mined-out gobs are ventilated with a bleeder system that must be inspected
regularly, except the bleeder less system is employed in four longwalls in New
Mexico and Utah that are liable to spontaneous combustion.
Advantages:

1. Production from the face can become much sooner than the normal
retreating method.
2. Careful planning of layout would allow the outer roads to be used for
subsequent faces.
3. Dirt disposal can be separated from coal production.
4. Where conditions are suitable it allows both archwork and square work.
Disadvantages:

1. In some instances the face has caught up with the headings and in this respect the
development is not entirely divorced from the face. Failures or delays in any one
heading can affect the whole work.
2. Three of the four gates have conveyor running their entire length and mechanical
equipment in each head. ‘Move up’ of equipment occurs fairly frequently.
3. Ventilation of the headings have to be provided and there could be difficulty in
ventilating and/or stone disposal in the outer return gate road.
4. Where heading machines are utilized the percentage machine utilization may be
low.
In the seam where methane emission from the face is high, it is considered desirable
to operate with a goaf bleeder return circuit or road. This is usually kept open with
wood chocks. It is used where ventilation is a problem rather than for reasons of
strata control.
Advantages:

1. The return side waste is swept clean.

2. The roof control does not hang heavily in the tailgate, at the face entry.
3. A third means of egress may be provided.
Disadvantages:

1. Little or no material is salvaged from the bleeder roads..

2. After working several such faces, the ventilation network and measurement can
be very complex and difficult to comprehend.
3. Where the goaf return circuit has to be kept open, this can involve supplying
and setting many chock pieces per day.
A cutaway view showing the panel layout and equipment setup in a longwall face.
Coal at the face is cut by a shearer loader or simply shearer. The shearer generally
rides on the pan of an armored face conveyor (AFC), which is laid on the floor
parallel to the faceline which is the straight line of the exposed coal face of the panel
coal block from headgate-corner to tailgate-corner. The face or longwall face refers
to the space enclosed by the faceline in the front side and shield’s caving shield (or
hydraulic leg props) in the rear side and from headgate to tailgate T-junctions in
which coal production operation is performed.

The shearer is hauled by two self-contained electric motors on each end of the
machine turning a series of sprocket wheels that run on a specialized track laid on
the gob side of the armored face chain conveyor (AFC). Thus the AFC serves as a
track for the shearer to move on back and forth. Two cutting drums, one at each end
of the shearer, similar in some respect to those used in a continuous miner but larger
in diameter and narrower in width, are mounted on the face side of the shearer.
The cutting position or height of a drum can be hydraulically adjusted by the
ranging arms. The cutting force is provided by the rotating torque available at the
axis of the drum. The width of the cut or web made by the shearer is about 0.76–
1.07 m wide.

Coal cut by the shearer is loaded onto the AFC and transported to the headgate T-
junction. A T-junction is the intersection of the longwall face and the headgate or
tailgate. The AFC consists of a series of pans of more often 1.5m or 1.75m or 2m
long, depending on the width of the shield supports. A special connector is used to
connect the adjacent pans such that the whole panline can be bent vertically and
horizontally to some extent without losing its stability and integrity.
At the headgate T-junction, coal is dumped, via a cross frame, onto a stage loader,
which in turn empties to the entry belt conveyor some distance outbye the T-
junction. A stage loader or beam stage loader (BSL) is a shorter chain conveyor like
an armored face conveyor, but it is mobile and capable of moving along with the
face. Since the AFC is laid on the mine floor and the entry belt conveyor is
supported by the belt structure high above the mine floor, the unloading end of a
stage loader where it dumps coal into the entry belt conveyor is raised like a goose
neck such that it can dump coal onto the belt and be pushed to overlap the entry belt
conveyor for 3.7–4.6 m. Stage loaders are 22.8–70 m long. At the inbye end of the
stage loader a crusher is installed to reduce oversized coal/rock materials.

The shield supports are used to support the roof at the face. They are set in one-web
back locations and can be advanced one-web cut distance immediately after the
shearer cuts and passes by in order to support the newly exposed roof as soon as
possible.
When a longwall panel of sufficient width and length is excavated, the overburden roof
strata are disturbed in order of severity from the immediate roof toward the surface. The
caved zone which is the immediate roof before it caves, ranges in thickness from 2 to 8
times the height of extraction (or mining height). In this zone the strata fall on the mine
floor and in the process are broken into irregular but platy shapes of various sizes. They
are crowded in a random manner. Thus the rock volume in its broken state is
considerably larger than that of the original intact strata. The volume ratio of broken
rock to its original intact strata is called the expansion ratio or bulking factor. There are
various estimates of expansion ratio for various rock types . Expansion ratio is a very
important factor because it determines the height of the caved zone.
Above the caved zone is the fractured zone. In this zone, the strata are broken into
blocks by vertical and/or subvertical fractures and horizontal cracks due to bed
separation. The adjacent blocks in each broken stratum are contacted either fully or
partially across the vertical or subvertical fractures. Thus there is a horizontal force
that is transmitted through and remains in these strata. With this horizontal force the
individual blocks in these broken strata cannot move freely without affecting the
movements of the adjacent blocks. These broken strata are called the force-
transmitting beams. The thickness of the fractured zone ranges from 28 to 42 times
the mining height. Thus the combined thickness of the caved and fractured zone
ranges from 30 to 50 times the mining height.

Between the fractured zone and the surface is the continuous deformation zone. In
this zone, the strata deform without causing any major cracks cutting through the
thickness of the strata as in the fractured zone. Therefore, the strata behave
essentially like a continuous medium.