The Calculation of the Share of Non-Transportation Technology under Combined Deepening and Compact Transverse Open-Pit Mining System
Despite the supply of modern mining equipment at mines of the Kuznetsk Basin, the efficiency of open-pit coal production is being reduced. It is quite obvious in this connection that the priority task is to find technological solutions enabling the environmental risk mitigation through different technologies of overburden removal to worked-out areas with fewer external dumps and earth surface disturbances. The paper describes the development procedure to design the parameters of a non-transportation operating area under the combined deepening and compact transverse open-pit mining system used for inclined and steeply dipping coal seams. Scientific and technical publications on the use of the worked-out area as an overburden storage facility deal only with the transportation method for removing the overburden rock from the mining face to the dumping area. At present there is no sufficient theoretical background on the issues referred to the substantiation of parameters and choice of the excavation equipment for the design of such technology under transverse heading conditions. The diversified occurrence of coal seams, a wide range of dragline operating dimensions used in the non-transportation technology and multiple mining depths determine a variety of solutions to the above problems. In this case the selection of possible mining options with different types of excavators for the subsequent criterion-based assessment is quite a challenge in itself. Thus, forecasting new applications of the non-transportation technology in the overburden removal under the combined deepening and compact transverse mining system one should be guided by the results of mining-geometric analysis both in establishing final contours of the quarry and evaluating the portion of the quarry volume accounted for the non-transportation technology.