SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OF TERRITORIES OF MINING REGIONS

Developing innovative technologies of mining coal seams and increasing the competitiveness of coal produced and providing further diversification of the mine using the "post-mining" concept as the basis for sustainable development of the coal mine region

Assessment of mining activities with respect to the environmental protection

This paper deals with the impact of mining on the environment. Coal mining is still among the most widespread and most intense mining activity, which disturbs the landscape around us bringing regional environmental, economic and aesthetic problems. However, for many countries in the world, including the Czech Republic, deposits of raw materials play an important role, especially for purposes of producing electricity and thermal energy. At the same time, growing emphasis laid on the environmental protection can be observed worldwide. To meet the increasing ecological demands, it is reasonable to consider the most significant aspects of mining activities from the environmental point of view, as well as to consider the possibilities of the abandoned mines utilization as possible waste dumps. Parts of this problem consist in: the monitoring, environmental impacts assessment of exploration and mining activities and waste disposal mining, which may significantly contribute to the environmental protection in the future. Several parameters that can significantly affect the usability of the waste disposal mining, such as geological structure, hydro-geological conditions, material composition and physical and mechanical properties of rocks are discussed in detail in this work. The article also includes a practical example of Environmental Impact Assessment process for the particular activity of OKD stock company, which is the only producer of hard coal (bituminous coal) in the Czech Republic. Its coal is mined in the southern part of the Upper Silesian Coal Basin - in the Ostrava-Karvina coal district. KeywordsWeb of Science221937

Toward a global coal mining moratorium? A comparative analysis of coal mining policies in the USA, China, India and Australia

To stop global warming at well below 2° C, the bulk of the world’s fossil fuel reserves will have to be left in the ground. Coal is the fossil fuel with the greatest proportion that cannot be used, and various advocacy groups are campaigning for a ban on the opening of new coal mines. Recently, both China and the USA implemented temporary moratoria on the approval of new coal mining leases. This article examines whether these coal mining bans reflect the emergence of a global norm to keep coal under the ground. To that end, we review recent coal mining policies in the four largest coal producers and explain them comparatively with a framework based on interests, ideas and institutions. We find that the norm of keeping coal in the ground remains essentially contested. Even in those countries that have introduced some form of a coal mining moratorium, the ban can easily be, or has already been, reversed. To the extent that the norm of keeping coal in the ground has momentum, it is primarily due to non-climate reasons: the Chinese moratorium was mostly an instance of industrial policy (aiming to protect Chinese coal companies and their workers from the overcapacity and low prices that are hitting the industry), while the USA’s lease restrictions were mainly motivated by concerns over fiscal justice. We do not find evidence of norm internalisation, which means that the emerging norm fails to gain much traction amid relevant national actors and other (large) coal producing states. If proponents of a moratorium succeed in framing the issue in non-climate terms, they should have a greater chance of building domestic political coalitions in favour of the norm

THE NIGERIAN COAL CORPORATION: AN EVALUATION OF PRODUCTION PERFORMANCE(1960 1987)

COAL WAS DISCOVERED IN NIGERIA IN 1909 AND COAL MINING STARTED WITH A DRIFT MINE AT OGBETE, ENUGU IN 1915. SINCE 1958/59, WHEN COAL PRODUCTION REACHED ITS PEAK, THERE HAS BEEN A PERSISTENT FLUCTUATION IN THE AMOUNT OF COAL PRODUCED IN SUBSEQUENT YEARS. THIS PAPER THEREFORE INVESTIGATES THE MAJOR CAUSES OF THE DECLINE OF THE NIGERIA COAL INDUSTRY AND PROVIDES A FRAMEWORK FOR GREATER(IMPROVED) PERFORMANCE.NIGERIA, COAL, INDUSTRY, MINING, COSTING, PRODUCTION, MARKET, REVITALIZATION SCHEME, PERFORMANCE, ANALYSIS, ENUGU

Financial Risks of Investments in Coal

Analyzes the regulatory, commodity, and construction risks of investing in coal mining and coal-fired power plants. Examines industry analysts' consensus on viable alternatives to coal, including natural gas, solar, wind, and energy efficiency

RECLAMATION POTENTIAL OF ROBINIA PSEUDOACACIA L. ON MINING ROCK WITHIN STEPPE ZONE OF UKRAINE

Western Donbass is a powerful coal-mining region in the Steppe zone of Ukraine. In this region, large areas are damaged by coal mining. The mine rocks spread all over the coal district of Dnipropetrovsk region often contain toxic inorganic contaminants. In this regard using mine rocks for biological reclamation is nowadays an important environmental issue. Tree species can accumulate heavy metals from technosoils during the whole year and transfer these elements together with other nutrients to aboveground phytomass through the vegetation period

New possibilities of calculating the volumes of extracted masses in the surface mining of brown coal

The companies engaged in brown coal mining are looking for ways of managing the mining process as efficiently as possible. The principal mining technology used for brown coal mining in our country, but also in Germany and Poland, are wheel excavators. The evolving GNSS technology has enabled designing and realisation of systems for determining the spatial position of the excavator wheel. The visualisation of the wheel's spatial position and tracking of its real-time motion is performed in the Czech Republic by the program Mine Model developed by the company KVASoftware. One of the most important tasks of mine surveyors is the calculation of the volumes of the extracted masses. The described system performs this task in real-time. This article describes an application that is used to automate volume calculations

Distributed communications and control network for robotic mining

The application of robotics to coal mining machines is one approach pursued to increase productivity while providing enhanced safety for the coal miner. Toward that end, a network composed of microcontrollers, computers, expert systems, real time operating systems, and a variety of program languages are being integrated that will act as the backbone for intelligent machine operation. Actual mining machines, including a few customized ones, have been given telerobotic semiautonomous capabilities by applying the described network. Control devices, intelligent sensors and computers onboard these machines are showing promise of achieving improved mining productivity and safety benefits. Current research using these machines involves navigation, multiple machine interaction, machine diagnostics, mineral detection, and graphical machine representation. Guidance sensors and systems employed include: sonar, laser rangers, gyroscopes, magnetometers, clinometers, and accelerometers. Information on the network of hardware/software and its implementation on mining machines are presented. Anticipated coal production operations using the network are discussed. A parallelism is also drawn between the direction of present day underground coal mining research to how the lunar soil (regolith) may be mined. A conceptual lunar mining operation that employs a distributed communication and control network is detailed