Extraction and deposit of coal. Development of coal mines and pools. Video: Coal. Modern coal mining

Coal fuel has been used by humans since ancient times. Its flammability and heat dissipation, the duration of heat retention in the hearth became the salvation of people in cold periods, which cyclically replaced each other on our planet. Coal is actively used even today; in the fuel and energy complex, it is in the top three raw materials along with oil and gas.

How were coal deposits formed?

Coal deposits were formed in the places of huge green areas. This is an ancient organic matter that remained after the death of tree plantations. In order for the dead plants to become coal, certain conditions are necessary: ​​the wood residues must not rot under the influence of bacteria. This is possible only when they get under the swamp water, and then underground, where oxygen does not enter. Coal is considered a mineral extracted from rock layers at various depths.

How are coal deposits found and developed?

Places where there is coal have long been explored on the planet. Its reserves in different countries are huge, they will be enough for the needs of heating and industry for almost three centuries. But according to geologists, there may be more, since not all parts of the world carried out deep geological prospecting for the presence of coal fuel. The development of coal deposits is relevant and brings tangible income to the states that are engaged in the extraction of this solid black gold. The process of developing deposits is carried out depending on the terrain and the depth of the coal seams.

Since I live in the land of miners, I could not help but be interested in the methods of extracting this mineral, which, by the way, are not so many. Taking this opportunity, I will try to briefly talk about the pros and cons of each of them.

Coal mining: mine method

Mining in this way provides a huge advantage, since the most valuable fuels lie at great depths. At the same time, coal practically does not contain waste rocks, which cannot be said about the open method, but about it a little later. So, in order to get to the deposits, they drill deep vertical tunnels. As soon as a reservoir is discovered, its horizontal development begins. Sometimes the depth reaches 1.5 km, for example, the Gvardeiskaya mine, which is located in the Donbass. However, this method has many disadvantages:

  • the threat of flooding;
  • since methane is an eternal companion of coal seams, this is fraught with suffocation of workers or undermining;
  • the greater the depth, the higher the temperature, which means that there is a risk to people and equipment.

In the world, about 40% of world reserves are mined in this way.


Coal mining: open pit or quarry

In this case, there is no need not only for expensive drilling, but also for the construction of a number of ground communications. The bottom line is to undermine the waste rock, and then huge excavators, crushers and trucks come into play, which process the rock and take it to the dumps. This method carries less danger, but still some risks are associated with it. This is the threat of an unscheduled explosion, and the poisoning of workers with exhaust, and careless handling of hazardous equipment.


Hydraulic coal mining

In principle, this is the same mine, but there is one feature: the transportation of the fossil is carried out by a jet of water under enormous pressure. It turns out that groundwater is a headache for miners, it works for their benefit. Today, this method is considered one of the best, as it replaces the labor-intensive process of transportation. The disadvantages include the dependence of production on the type of rock, and the constant contact of water with the equipment.

In Russia, the Siberian Federal District produces more than 80% of coal from the total volume in the country. Coal production has been on the rise in recent years. The industry leader is OAO SUEK.

The largest branch (in terms of the number of workers and the cost of production fixed assets) of the fuel industry is coal mining in Russia. The coal industry extracts, processes (enriches) coal, lignite and anthracites.

How and how much coal is produced in the Russian Federation

This mineral is mined depending on the depth of location: open (in cuts) and underground (in mines) methods. Between 2000 and 2015, underground production increased from 90.9 to 103.7 million tons, while open-pit production increased by more than 100 million tons from 167.5 to 269.7 million tons. The amount of the mineral mined in the country during this period, broken down by production methods, see fig. one.


According to the Fuel and Energy Complex (FEC), in the Russian Federation in 2016, 385 million tons of black minerals were mined, which is 3.2% higher than the previous year. This allows us to draw a conclusion about the positive dynamics of the industry growth in recent years and about the prospects, despite the crisis.

The types of this mineral, mined in our country, are divided into power and coking coals. In the total volume for the period from 2010 to 2015, the share of energy production increased from 197.4 to 284.4 million tons. See fig. 2.


Source: Coal magazine according to Rosstat

How many black minerals are in the country and where is it mined

According to Rosstat, the Russian Federation (157 billion tons) ranks second after the United States (237.3 billion tons) in the world in terms of coal reserves. The Russian Federation accounts for about 18% of all world reserves. See figure 3.


Source: Rosstat

Information from Rosstat for 2010-2015 suggests that mining in the country is carried out in 25 subjects of the Federation in 7 Federal Districts. There are 192 coal enterprises. Among them are 71 mines, and 121 coal mines. Their combined production capacity is 408 million tons. More than 80% of it is mined in Siberia. Coal mining in Russia by region is shown in Table 1.

Source: Ministry of Energy of the Russian Federation

In 2016, 227,400 thousand tons. mined in the Kemerovo region (such cities with one industry affiliation are called single-industry towns), of which about 125,000 thousand tons were exported.

Kuzbass accounts for about 60% of domestic coal production, there are about 120 mines and cuts.

At the beginning of February 2017, a new open-pit mine was launched in the Kemerovo region - Trudarmeisky Yuzhny with a design capacity of 2,500 thousand tons per year.

In 2017, it is planned to produce 1,500 thousand tons of minerals at the open pit, and, according to forecasts, the open pit will reach its design capacity in 2018. Also in 2017, three new enterprises are planned to be launched in Kuzbass.

The largest deposits

On the territory of the Russian Federation there are 22 coal basins (according to Rosstat for 2014) and 129 individual deposits. More than 2/3 of the reserves of those that have already been explored are concentrated in the Kansk-Achinsk (79.3 billion tons) and Kuznetsk (53.4 billion tons) basins. They are located on the territory of the Kemerovo region of the Krasnoyarsk Territory.

Also among the largest basins are: Irkutsk, Pechora, Donetsk, South Yakutsk, Minusinsk, and others. Figure 4 shows the structure of explored reserves for the main basins.


Source: Rosstat

Import Export

The Russian Federation is one of the three largest exporters of coal after Australia (export volume 390 million tons) and Indonesia (330 million tons) in 2015. The share of Russia in 2015 - 156 million tons of black fossil went for export. This indicator for the country has grown by 40 million tons in five years. In addition to the Russian Federation, Australia and Indonesia, the top six countries include the United States of America, Colombia and South Africa. The structure of world exports is shown in fig. 5.

Rice. 5: Structure of world exports (largest exporting countries).

When I was invited to see how coal is mined in the Amur Region, I did not immediately decide where to fly. Moscow and the Amur Region, where the coal mines of the Amursky Coal company (part of the Russian Coal holding) are located, are separated by thousands of kilometers, a six-hour flight and a six-hour time difference. I'll get enough sleep during the flight, I thought, assembled the equipment, tightened the time zones and flew off.

Today in we will learn how brown coal is mined.


When I arrived at the coal deposits and said "quarry", they immediately corrected me - not "quarry", but "cut". The cut, because the way coal is mined is such that when the waste rock is excavated, long depressions are obtained in the ground, which look like cuts. If you look at the North-Eastern section near the city of Raichikhinsk from space, you can see the following picture - stripes in the ground characteristic of coal mining.

Mining at the North-Eastern open pit (area 500 km2) has been carried out since 1932. The Erkovetsky open pit (deposit area 1250 km2) began to produce coal in 1991 for the country. The thickness of the coal seam here is 3.5 - 5 meters.

Brown coal does not lie very deep underground, therefore it is mined in an open way, which is considered safer, more economical and faster. At first glance at a piece of coal, the question arises "why is it brown if it is black?" But the specialists of Amur Coal explained to me that earlier the quality of coal was determined by the trace of a line left on a porcelain plate. Amur coal, as you understand, leaves a brown trail.

Brown coal is less caloric than coal and anthracite. We look at Wikipedia and find out that the calorie content, that is, the heat of combustion, is the amount of heat released during the complete combustion of a mass or volume unit of a substance. Coal also has other quality parameters - moisture and sulfur content, volatile substances and ash content. All this is carefully analyzed by the departments of technological quality control of coal and coal chemistry laboratories.

But back to the process of extracting solid fuel. Everything here, at first glance, is quite simple - a giant walking dragline excavator opens coal (takes out waste rock), and a smaller excavator loads coal into wagons. That's all! But if it were so simple, there would be no end to those who want to mine coal. In reality, coal mining requires large investments, experience and knowledge, a team of real professionals with rare skills and abilities, as well as an extensive fleet of expensive mining equipment, repair shops or factories, car depots, training centers ... I will not burden you with information about how geologists look for coal, how they get a license for mining, and let's move on to the most interesting and understandable.

I have always associated coal mining with big, no, with huge excavators. Actually, on coal mines, they immediately catch the eye because of their impressive appearance and majestic posture - proudly upturned arrows immediately make it clear that “black gold” is being mined somewhere here.

There are abbreviations in the name of each excavator. For example, ESh 15/90 means Walking Excavator, 15 cubic meters is the volume of the bucket, and 90 meters is the length of the boom. In total, 24 such mastodons are involved in the cuts of Amursky Coal, differing in the length of the arrow and the volume of the bucket. In some buckets, the UAZ "loaf" will easily fit, and in others - the Land Cruiser SUV.

Overburden (excavation of sandstone and clay) occurs as follows: the excavator operator lowers the bucket to the ground, then, using control levers, pulls it towards himself, filling it.

Then the driver, by turning the base and the boom, transfers the bucket towards the dumps and pours it out. For a month, the excavator crew should open about 300 thousand cubic meters of rock.



Where the dragline worked, mountains of waste rock remain - dumps. Therefore, the area where coal is mined, in some places resembles lunar landscapes. But only as long as coal is being mined. After working out the site, it is immediately recultivated - dumps are leveled, a fertile layer of earth is added, trees are planted. In a few years, most people will not even notice that coal mining and walking giants used to work here!

In the meantime, the landscape of the section can be used to study geology.

By the way, after the dragline got to the coal, and then the coal was chosen (that is, it was completely dug out in some area), the cut is backfilled with the same rock - a real waste-free production!

It was a revelation to me that walking excavators (and many other excavators too) run on electrical energy. Each mountain section of the section receives electricity from a 35/6 kV substation.

All equipment at the cuts works around the clock and seven days a week: crews work in shifts. Small indulgences in work can be done only in the case of abnormally low temperatures - when giant buckets begin to freeze tightly to the ground.


But I will talk more about draglines later in a separate post. Keep for updates.

Coal seams lie close to groundwater, so it must be constantly pumped out. Here you can clearly see which layer of rock was removed to get to the coal deposits.

Well, then everything is simple - the EKG-5A excavator collects coal into a bucket and loads it immediately into wagons, which will take it in ordinary form to the consumer or to the coal sorting site.

5 cubic meters of coal are placed in the bucket of the EKG-5A excavator, and in order to fill a standard car, 13-14 buckets of coal must be loaded into it.

Coal is brought for sorting in order to separate it into different fractions. The local Raychikhinskaya GRES and the Blagoveshchenskaya CHPP consume fine coal, while the larger one goes to the needs of housing and communal services, in other words, for heating.

This is what the coal sorting area looks like from the inside. If you do not know what it is and how it works, then the next action will be a surprise, as it was for me.

This is such a "carousel" for cars. The operator from outside checks that the car has entered the car dumping platform, gives a signal, and the car, which is standing on the platform, rises and dumps the contents into the receiving hopper.

In a few seconds, this huge mechanism (stationary lateral car dumper) puts the car in its previous position.

An impressive sight!

After that, coal is sent from the receiver through a complex system of conveyors through a special gallery for sorting, where it is divided into different fractions with the help of screens and a vibrating screen. Well, then into the furnace to provide electricity and heat.

That's all! Thanks for reading.

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