Surface coal mines prior to 1950 in the USA were generally left without any reclamation. As government regulations advanced since then, mine operators were required to backfill the area and plant grasses or trees. After the federal Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) was passed in 1977 in the USA, mine operators were required to conduct pre-mining analyses of the site and to desi...

Abstract: In order to find the main direction of energy saving and emission reduction in coal mine areas, this paper established a system dynamic model for energy consumption and environmental pollution produced in coal mining process, and took a typical coal mine as the case to simulate the energy saving and emission reduction in coal mining area. And through the analysis of simulation results...

Modern underground coal mining requires certainty about geological faults and other structural features for safety reasons. Even a fault with a throw of a few metres can create safety issues and lead to costly delays in mine production. To ensure there are no unwelcome surprises concerning seam conditions during mining, seismic reflection surveys have been widely used by Australian coal mines, ...

BACKGROUND Coal is produced across 25 states and provides 42% of US energy. With production expected to increase 7.6% by 2035, proximate populations remain at risk of exposure to carcinogenic coal products such as silica dust and organic compounds. It is unclear if population exposure is associated with increased risk, or even which cancers have been studied in this regard. METHODS We perform...

Shanxi province in northern China has one of the highest reported prevalence rates of neural tube defects (NTDs) in the world. The current study selected Heshun, the county with the highest rate of NTDs in Shanxi, as a study area and tested whether residence in a coal mining area was a contributing factor. A NTD cluster was detected in an area within 6 km of the coal mines for almost every year...

Outbursts of gas and rocks are one of the serious hazards, occurring in the underground mining. There were numerous examples of the large catastrophes in mines, caused by this phenomenon, with a lot of casualties among miners. According to Hargraves [2], the outburst is a sudden release of gas and coal from the freshly exposed coal face during exploitation of the seams or during driving accessi...

The Yangquan coalfield is one of the typical highly gassy mining areas in China. However, its coal seams are of lower permeability, which are not conductive to coalbed methane (CBM) drainage. In this study, based on the theory of the ground movement, we analyzed the principle of coal and CBM coextraction in the Yangquan coalfield, and established the technology system of coal and CBM coextracti...