南大夕張炭鉱における機械化の足取りと今後の方針

抄録

Minami Oyubari Coal Mine has three minable coal seams. They are lying in an extremely complicated geologic structure; therefore, manual operations with hydraulic props have been mainly adopted together with an Air Blaster system unless good mining conditions had been foreseen beforehand. The annual production is approximately one million tons with 4 longwall sections. At present two of these are mechanized. and the others are manually onerated.
Eleven longwall panels were equipped with several types of powered supports, and drum shearers were tried in 13 longwall panels up to now. Most of the panels, however, could not be considered to be successful owing to various types of difficulties. The biggest problem would be the widend unsupported roof ahead of the canopy of powered supports created by a wide lift of the drum shearers.
The coal ploughs were introduced first in December, 1980, and are achieving a satisfactory productivity. This year the production from the mechanized longwall faces will exceed 60% of the total production for the first time in this mine's history. This is nothing but a result of the ploughs, and consequently all longwall faces will be tried being mined by the ploughs in the future. One of the main mechanization plans is a trial on the combination of powered suPnorts and a coal plough.
The mining environments of this mine will be getting severer in terms of mine safety and operatina costs. so any efforts will be given to tne mechamzation focused on the coal ploughs in order to achieve a safe, inexpensive, and steady production system.