THICK SEAM MINING METHODS AND PROBLEMS

ASSOCIATED WITH IT

Submitted by: SAURABH SINGH

 CONTENT

• Introduction
• General information about thickness of seam
in India and other countries.
• Problems of mining thick coal seam.
• Methods of mining thick coal seam.
• References
 Introduction
In India ,coal seams of 4.8m thickness or higher are called
thick . Nearly 60% of total coal reserve that are workable by
underground mining methods in the country are thick coal
seams. To fulfill the increasing demand of coal ,most of these
thick coal seams have been developed extensively in single or
multiple slice. Around 30% of the developed thick seam are
underneath a protected surface, while the remaining 70% are
available for caving subject to the availability of a suitable
mining method to extract coal under the existing challenges of
the difficult geo mining condition.

 
General information about thick seam
in India and other countries
• In india more than 4.8m seams are considered
as thick seams.
• While in USSR seams more than 3.5m are
considered as thick seam.
• In england more than 1.83m seam are
considered as thick seam
• In france,canada and australia seams more
than 4m are considered as thick seams.
 PROBLEMS OF MINING THICK COAL
SEAM
• Strata control is difficult.
• Heavier supports are required.
• Inspection of roof is difficult.
• Risk of overriding of pillars.
• With the collapse,large volume of gas may be
expelled.
• Percentage of extraction is low usually less
than 50%.
• More chances of spontaneous heating. Since
considerable amount of coal is lost in goaf.
• Due to high working ventilation may be slow
especially in depillaring areas and if the seam
is gassy this may result in methane layering.
 METHODS OF MINING THICK COAL
SEAMS
• In india over 60% of all coal reserves are contained in thick
seams some of which are nearly 30m thick one
exceptionally 162m thick in singrauli coalfield. Methods of
extraction used are:
1. Slice mining: In slice mining coal seam is divided into slices
of appropriate thickness and from these slices coal can be
extracted in either ascending,descending or mixed order.
1.1 Ascending slice: In this method coal seam is divided into
blocks and each block, each block consisting of a number of
slices. The slices in the block are worked into ascending order
with stowing, while the blocks are worked in descending
order. This method is commonly practiced in horizontal slicing
method of thick seam.
• 1.2 Descending Slice
Descending slicing can be done with or without
stowing. In case of descending slicing with caving,
spreading of wire neeting is required to make
artificial roof to arrest material of the broken goaf of
the upper slice and this wire neeting serves as the
roof for the lower slices; i.e , lower slices are worked
below the broken goaf.Stowing is rarely practiced in
descending slicing.
 
• 1.3 Mixed order slicing
• In this method coal seams are divided into
blocks and each block consisting of number
of slices . The slices in the block are worked in
ascending order with stowing, while the
blocks are worked in descending order.This
method is commonly practiced in horizontal
slicing method of thick seam mining.
2. Blasting Gallery method
• The 1st BG Panel was started in the country at east katras colliery in jharia coal field(BCCL) in
1987.
• In Ranigang(ECCl) in the the year 1987 this method was partially successs full but was
discontinued due to spontaneous heating.
• SCCL introduced BG method in the year 1989 for extraction of a coal seam with 11m thickness.
• The method was very successful resulting in 85 % of extraction with high productivity.
• BG method is a semi mechanised way of extracting coal .
• Seam must be greater than 7m thick to use this method.
• Seam must be flatter ,i.e gradien t must be 1 in 5.
• In this method the seam is developed into panels of 50m x 100m.From the main heading the
room is driven to the full width of the panel and the coal between the room is blasted to the
full thickness of seam.
• Blasted coal is loaded by remote control loaders.
• Thick seams upto 15m can be extracted in single pass with percentage extraction of 65% to 85%.
 REFERENCES
• RD singh
• www.sciencedirect.com
• www.britannica.com