As an ancient industry, the traditional production mode of mining is an important reason for frequent safety problems such as mine accidents, high labor costs, and difficult and dangerous operation of miners. With the deep integration of “5G+ Industrial Internet”, smart mining has become the inevitable trend of the future development of the mining industry, and the era of “5G+ smart mining” is gradually approaching.

As an important force leading the innovation and development of mining industry, intelligence is becoming a “tuyere” for all parties to invest. However, when the opportunity comes, it is also facing the challenges of intelligent mine construction norms, industry standards formulation, avoiding excessive concept speculation and disorderly development of the industry, which requires the government, industry, enterprises and other braced forces to work together to achieve “internal success”.

Recently, the News and Publicity Center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Smart Mine Working Committee of the China Mining Federation co-hosted the “5G+ Smart Mine” forum. Wang Baoping, chief editor of the News and Publicity Center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, pointed out that the application of 5G in smart mines is still a new topic, and more experts, scholars and enterprises need to explore and practice.

The traditional model has been criticized for forcing industrial change

Coal is the strategic pillar energy of our country. In China’s primary energy structure, coal accounted for 57.7% in 2019, and is expected to account for 50.0% in 2030. The traditional model of coal mining has brought wealth but also heavy costs.

He Manchao, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that the traditional coal mining method is “121 construction method”, which was proposed by the British in 1706 and has been around for more than 300 years. However, the drawbacks of “121 construction method” are widely criticized.

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First of all, the “121 construction method” is easy to cause resource loss, the mining area recovery rate is 75% to 85%, the mine recovery rate is less than 50%, and the coal pillar loss is about 3.85 billion tons, worth about 2 trillion yuan. Secondly, the “121 construction method” roadway excavation volume is large, resulting in high cost. According to statistics, the average tunneling rate of 10,000 tons is 34 meters, and at the current production scale, the annual coal roadway tunneling is about 13,000 kilometers, and the tunneling and related costs exceed 100 billion yuan. In addition, the “121 construction method” also caused ecological damage, according to statistics, the national ecological damage area reached 22 million mu, and the annual ecological damage increase by 1.05 million mu.

Not only that, “single-head excavation, local ventilation, empty top operation” lead to the vast majority of safety accidents occur in the mining roadway. According to statistics, 91.5% of safety accidents occur in laneways.

In this regard, He Manchao said that with the arrival of the third mining technology revolution, it is necessary to carry out the docking integration of 5G and intelligent mining, and improve traditional construction methods with the help of new technologies such as 5G to achieve intelligent control of the whole mine, automatic coal mining, and intelligent decision-making.

“The ‘smart mine’ is the application of artificial intelligence, cloud computing, big data, Internet of Things, geographic information technology, intelligent robots, virtual reality and other high-tech to each operation link of mine production, to achieve the digitization and intelligence of the whole process and the whole life cycle of the mine, and its ultimate goal is to realize the ‘unmanned mine’.” Explained Zhang Yuansheng, general manager of Beikuang Intelligent Technology Co., LTD.

In fact, the intelligent development of mining has a long history. In the 1990s, Canada, Sweden, Finland and other countries have formulated the development plan of “intelligent mine” and “unmanned mine”, and the United States has also carried out research on automatic positioning and navigation technology for underground coal mines, and obtained commercial research results. Mining is from human mining, mechanical mining, digital mining, sensing mining and other different formats, to automation, intelligence and unmanned advance.

In order to comply with the development trend of intelligent mines, China issued the National Mineral Resources Plan (2016-2020) in 2016, proposing that in the next five years, we should vigorously promote scientific and technological innovation in the mining field, and accelerate the construction of digital, intelligent, information and automated mines.

In this regard, Peng Qiming, president of the China Mining Federation, said: “The use of highly engineered technology, combined with the application of emerging key technologies such as artificial intelligence, Internet of things and big data, to achieve digital connectivity and operational optimization in all aspects is a new trend of mining technology innovation and development.”