Innovation for sustainable mining: Integrated planning of underground coal mining and mine reclamation

Abstract

Coal supplies essential materials for social development. In many cases, however, the separation planning of underground coal mining (UCM) and mine reclamation (MR) and “mining first, reclamation later” lead to the accumulation of land degradation. Thus, the integrated planning of UCM and MR needs to be studied urgently. In this study, concurrent mining and reclamation (CMR) technologies were adopted to divide UCM planning into four key steps from the space-time scale: i) development roadway (macro); ii) preparation roadway (moderate); iii) panel roadway (meso) and iv) working face (micro), and the impacts of mining steps on MR were discussed. In addition, the requirements of four-key links of MR for UCM were discussed: i) reclamation elevation (RE); ii) digging depth (DD); iii) reclamation layout (RL), and iv) reclamation timing (RT). UCM and MR were optimized on macro, moderate, meso, and micro scales. Results show that: (1) RE and DD are moderate and meso scales; (2) RL is macro and moderate scales; (3) RT is meso and micro scales. Integrated planning of UCM and MR can reduce mining damage from the source, which can timely reclaim degraded land, and alleviate the contradictions of the government, colliery and farmer. We hope CMR will be valued to jointly improve application scenarios and guide sustainable mining.