August 2015
|
World Coal
|
67
FROM
GERMANY
TO THE WORLD
Philipp Martin, Mark Becker and Martin Junker,
RAG Mining Solutions, Germany,
discuss the intelligent interaction
of the key systems that make up a longwall mining installation.
A
s well as coming to terms with a set of quite
particular geological conditions, the deep coal
industry has to ensure that high health and
safety standards are maintained everywhere
below ground. The German mining sector is now facing
another challenge in that the planned closure of the
indigenous coal industry will entail a massive loss of
mining expertise as a result of the downsizing process.
This has to be offset by other means, which includes the
automation of certain operating procedures.
In such a complex environment, all of the information
on the winning machines and other items of equipment
installed along the coal face has to be collected and
transmitted to the surface control station for processing
and control purposes in order to maintain the winning
operation. As well as managing the normal data handling
and processing routines, this also means having to bundle
various data streams at a central point.
Against this background, RAG Aktiengesellschaft has
devised different methods, including the use of
automation, for ensuring that longwall coal production is
maintained until the end of 2018. This has involved
employing the wide range of skills available throughout
the group:
n
Mining expertise acquired over 40 yr of
RAG Aktiengesellschaft operations.
n
Automation skills developed for production faces and
for other branches of industry.
n
Development expertise for process optimisation.
n
Interface expertise for the intelligent networking of
technical systems.
