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Discover the most cutting-edge solutions to the environmental problems posed by coal
In Innovative Approaches towards Ecological Coal Mining and Utilization, a distinguished team of researchers delivers a comprehensive and fulsome exploration of the ecological problems caused by coal mining and utilization. The book discusses environmental pollution and carbon emissions in the context of modelling coal engineering issues, the design of innovative coal engineering systems, and the evaluation of innovative coal mining systems.
The authors consider the technical and economic viability of each proposed solution, making the book ideal reading for environmental and energy researchers in academic and industrial circles. Fully interdisciplinary, Innovative Approaches towards Ecological Coal Mining and Utilization offers readers an integrated look at the management science and policy simulation involved solutions to ecological problems caused by coal mining and utilization.
The included resources make full use of expansive case studies to illustrate the concepts discussed in the book, as well as robust economic analyses of the various technologies. Readers will also discover:
- A thorough introduction to ecological coal mining and developing trends in ecological coal utilization
- Comprehensive explorations of innovative approaches in coal mining and a multiple coal seams-oriented equilibrium strategy towards coal-water conflict resolution
- Practical discussions of seasonal change-oriented dynamic strategies towards coal-water conflict resolution and GIS-oriented equilibrium strategies for coal gangue contamination mitigation
- In-depth examinations of carbon dioxide emission reduction in coal-fired power operations
Perfect for environmental and water chemists, mining specialists, and chemical engineers, Innovative Approaches towards Ecological Coal Mining and Utilization will also prove to be an invaluable addition to the libraries of process engineers seeking the latest information on solutions to the environmental problems caused by coal mining and utilization.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Preface
Acknowledgments
1 Technical Developing Pathway of Ecological Coal Mining
1.1 Background Introduction
1.2 Coal Mining Technology Development
1.3 Discussion
References
2 Developing Trending Toward Ecological Coal Utilization
2.1 Background Introduction
2.2 Coal Utilization Evolution
2.3 Coal Utilization Development Trends
2.4 Discussion
References
3 Multiple Coal Seam Coproduction‐Oriented Equilibrium Approach Toward Coal–Water Conflict
3.1 Background Review
3.2 Modeling
3.3 Solution Approach
3.4 Case Study
3.5 Discussion
References
4 Seasonal Changes‐Oriented Dynamic Strategy Toward Coal–Water Conflict Resolutions
4.1 Background Expression
4.2 Methodology
4.3 Case Study
4.4 Discussion
References
5 GIS‐Oriented Equilibrium Strategy Toward Coal Gangue Contamination Mitigating
5.1 Review of Background
5.2 Key Problem Statement
5.3 Coal Gangue Facility Siting Method
5.4 Case Study
5.5 Discussion
References
6 Dynamic Investment Strategy Toward Emissions Reduction and Energy Conservation of Coal Mining
6.1 Background Review
6.2 Modeling
6.3 Economic‐Ecological Equilibrium Model Solution Approach
6.4 Case Study
6.5 Discussion and Analysis
References
7 Carbon Dioxide Emissions Reduction‐Oriented Integrated Coal‐Fired Power Operation Method
7.1 Background Review
7.2 Key Problem Statement
7.3 Modeling
7.4 Case Study
7.5 Results and Discussion
References
8 Equilibrium Coal Blending Method Toward Multiple Air Pollution Reduction
8.1 Background Presentation
8.2 Case Study
8.3 Results and Discussion
References
9 Equilibrium Biomass–Coal Blending Method Toward Carbon Emissions Reduction
9.1 Background Review
9.2 Key Problem Statement
9.3 Modeling
9.4 Case Study
9.5 Results and Discussion
References
10 Carbon Emission Reduction‐Oriented Equilibrium Strategy for Thermal–Hydro–Wind Generation System
10.1 Background Introduction
10.2 Modeling
10.3 Case Study
10.4 Data Collection
10.5 Result and Discussion
References
11 Economic‐Environmental Equilibrium‐Based Wind–Solar–Thermal Power Generation System
11.1 Background Introduction
11.2 Key Problem Statement
11.3 Modeling
11.4 Case Study
11.5 Discussion
References
12 Carbon Emissions Reductions‐Oriented Equilibrium Strategy for Municipal Solid Waste with Coal Co‐combustion
12.1 Background Introduction
12.2 Key Problem Statement
12.3 Modeling
12.4 Case Study
12.5 Discussion
References
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 1
Table 1.1 Selection criteria.
Chapter 3
Table 3.1 Crisp parameters in the proposed model.
Table 3.2 Fuzzy parameters in the proposed model.
Table 3.3 The data of
.
Table 3.4 Other input crisp parameters of the proposed model.
Table 3.5 Crisp parameters of each collieries in the research region.
Table 3.6 Result of SN‐MCMP under confidence level
, water quality I.
Table 3.7 Results of SN‐MCMP under different confidence levels, water quali...
Table 3.8 Result of SN‐MCMP under confidence level
, water quality level II...
Table 3.9 Results of SN‐MCMP under different confidence levels, water quali...
Chapter 4
Table 4.1 Unit coal drainage coefficient when colliery
produces in season
Table 4.2 Unit coal drainage coefficient for exploitation at colliery
:
(
Table 4.3 The input parameters of the
environmental protection based mining
...
Table 4.4 Crisp parameters used in EP‐MQC model.
Table 4.5 The crisp parameters of the EP‐MQC model.
Table 4.6 Result of EP‐MQC model under confidence level
, satisfaction degr...
Table 4.7 Results of EP‐MQC model under different confidence levels
, satis...
Table 4.8 Results of EP‐MQC model under different satisfaction degree
, con...
Table 4.9 Results of EP‐MQC model under different satisfaction degree
, con...
Table 4.10 Results of EP‐MQC model under different satisfaction degree
, co...
Chapter 5
Table 5.1 Basic information for each colliery.
Table 5.2 Distance between the colliery and the CGPF candidate site (km).
Table 5.3 Transportation capacity between the colliery and the CGPF candida...
Table 5.4 Uncertainty parameter for each colliery.
Table 5.5 Input parameters in the CGPF site selection system.
Table 5.6 Results for all CGPF candidate sites at stack limit is
(
RMB)....
Table 5.7 Coal output and coal gangue transportation plan for each colliery...
Table 5.8 Coal output and gangue transportation quantity from each colliery...
Chapter 6
Table 6.1 The basic parameters of Chaohua Colliery.
Table 6.2 The last five years pollutant emissions of Chaohua Colliery.
Table 6.3 The parameters of emission reduction.
Table 6.4 The parameters for energy conservation.
Table 6.5 The parameters for coal market.
Table 6.6 The optimal solution of production and investment.
Chapter 7
Table 7.1 Certain parameters of Binhai port CSDC.
Table 7.2 Uncertain parameters of each CPP.
Table 7.3 Uncertain parameters of each coal component.
Table 7.4 Parameters of coal properties and quality requirement in fuzzy fo...
Table 7.5 Results of the proposed model when
and
.
Table 7.6 Results of the proposed model when
and
.
Table 7.7 Results of the proposed model when
and
.
Table 7.8 Results of the proposed model when
and
.
Table 7.9 Results of the proposed model when
and
.
Table 7.10 Results of the proposed model when
and
.
Table 7.11 Results of the proposed model when
and
.
Table 7.12 The total profits and C
emissions under different situations.
Table 7.13 Satisfaction degrees of different CPPs at various
.
Chapter 8
Table 8.1 Certain parameters of each CPP.
Table 8.2 Other parameters used in the proposed model.
Table 8.3 Parameters of component coals in fuzzy form.
Table 8.4 Uncertain parameters of each CPP.
Table 8.5 Sensitivity analysis on the local authority's attitude toward
em...
Table 8.6 Sensitivity analysis on the local authority's attitude toward car...
Table 8.7 Sensitivity analysis on the local authority's attitude toward car...
Table 8.8 Sensitivity analysis on the local authority's attitude toward carb...
Table 8.9 Sensitivity analysis on the local authority's attitude toward carb...
Table 8.10 Sensitivity analysis on the local authority's attitude toward ca...
Chapter 9
Table 9.1 Straw resource quantities, prices, and power demand.
Table 9.2 Fuzzy straw prices.
Table 9.3 Crisp parameters.
Table 9.4 Other parameters.
Table 9.5 Fuzzy uncertain parameters for each fuel.
Table 9.6 Fuzzy CPP requirements and factors.
Table 9.7 Results when
and
is changing.
Table 9.8 Results when
and
is changing.
Table 9.9 Results when
and
is changing.
Chapter 10
Table 10.1 Parameters of hydropower station.
Table 10.2 Turbine parameters of hydropower station.
Table 10.3 Parameters of wind farm 1.
Table 10.4 Parameters of wind farm 2.
Table 10.5 Crisp parameters of coal‐combusted power plants.
Table 10.6 Fuzzy parameters of coal‐combusted power plants.
Table 10.7 Power plant output in different seasons when water flow is high.
Table 10.8 Power plant output in different seasons when water flow is norma...
Table 10.9 Power plant output in different seasons when water flow is low.
Table 10.10 Calculation results under different scenarios.
Table 10.11 Power plants output rate under different scenarios.
Chapter 11
Table 11.1 Certain parameters for the case.
Table 11.2 Coal to electricity parameter and coal to carbon emission paramet...
Table 11.3 Wind speed data in fuzzy numbers (m/s).
Table 11.4 Solar irradiation data in fuzzy numbers (
).
Table 11.5 Power demand data of Ha‐Zheng Line (MW).
Table 11.6 Power output of 12 scheduling scenarios (MW).
Table 11.7 Hourly output of thermal power, wind power, and solar power when ...
Table 11.8 Hourly output of thermal power, wind power, and solar power when ...
Table 11.9 Hourly output of thermal power, wind power, and solar power when ...
Table 11.10 Objective values of the 12 scheduling scenarios (MW).
Chapter 12
Table 12.1 Uncertain parameters of each fuel and carbon to power parameter ...
Table 12.2 Lower and upper bounds of fuel qualities at MSWACPPs.
Table 12.3 Certain parameters at each MSWACPP.
Table 12.4 Other parameters used in the proposed model.
Table 12.5 Results when
and
is changing.
Table 12.6 Results when
and
is changing.
Table 12.7 Results when
and
is changing.
Table 12.8 Results when
and
is changing.
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1 A generalized data analysis system.
Figure 1.2 Timezone view for coal mining technology keywords diagram.
Figure 1.3 Three stages of the technological paradigm.
Figure 1.4 Technological paradigm for coal mining technology.
Figure 1.5 The UCG process.
Figure 1.6 The Kuhn Cycle and the System Improvement Process.
Figure 1.7 Ecological coal mining in the future.
Chapter 2
Figure 2.1 The structure of ODAS.
Figure 2.2 Keywords focus of coal utilization.
Figure 2.3 Three stages of the technological paradigm.
Figure 2.4 Coal utilization paradigm considering both technology and policy....
Figure 2.5 The framework of a nuclear‐coal hybrid energy system.
Figure 2.6 The framework of solar aided coal‐fired power generation system....
Figure 2.7 IGCC technological process.
Figure 2.8 CFBC technological process.
Figure 2.9 An imaginary no‐coal‐on‐the‐ground integrated energy system.
Figure 2.10 The analytical framework for the development of coal utilization...
Chapter 3
Figure 3.1 Flowchart of mining quota allocation.
Figure 3.2 Flowchart for the construction of the fuzzy membership functions....
Figure 3.3 Presentation of the case region.
Chapter 4
Figure 4.1 Flowchart of the mining quota allocation.
Figure 4.2 Flowchart for the construction of the fuzzy membership functions....
Figure 4.3 The changing trends for the total mining drainage and the total b...
Figure 4.4 Mining quota allocation scheme under different confidence level
Figure 4.5 Changing trends for total financial revenue at different satisfac...
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1 The bilevel relationship between the local authority and the coll...
Figure 5.2 Flowchart for GIS modeling technique for CGF site identification ...
Figure 5.3 Flowchart for expected fuzzy coal gangue emissions Coefficient.
Figure 5.4 Reaction of each colliery when the reduction target is 0.9.
Figure 5.5 Reaction of each colliery when the reduction target is 0.8.
Figure 5.6 Reaction of each colliery when the reduction target is 0.7.
Figure 5.7 Reaction of each colliery when the reduction target is 0.6.
Figure 5.8 The total coal gangue transportation quantity with the limitation...
Figure 5.9 The government's total social revenues with the limitation level ...
Chapter 6
Figure 6.1 The relationship of ecological and economic benefit in production...
Figure 6.2 The particle updating process of standard and AM‐based PSO.
Figure 6.3 The flowchart of the algorithm solving economic‐ecological equili...
Figure 6.4 The geographical location and mining process of Chaohua Coal Mine...
Figure 6.5 The emission reductions and energy conservation status at each st...
Figure 6.6 The optimal solution under different
.
Figure 6.7 The optimal solution under different
.
Figure 6.8 The optimal solution under different
.
Figure 6.9 The total coal productions and investment under different conditi...
Figure 6.10 The ER–EC status of coal mines under different conditions.
Figure 6.11 The total profit under different conditions.
Chapter 7
Figure 7.1 The logic diagram of dynamic equilibrium strategy toward ICPBD pr...
Figure 7.2 Changing trends for total C
emissions and the total benefits und...
Figure 7.3 Changing trends for total financial revenue at different satisfac...
Figure 7.4 Changing trends for satisfaction degree at various C
emissions c...
Figure 7.5 Blending ratio of each CPP under different situations.
Chapter 8
Figure 8.1 Flowchart of the bilevel structure.
Figure 8.2 Changing trends of sensitive analysis under different dimensions....
Figure 8.3 CPPs' sensitive toward the changing policy control parameter unde...
Figure 8.4 Blending ratio of each CPP under different scenarios.
Chapter 9
Figure 9.1 Dynamic inventory management.
Figure 9.2 Flowchart of fuzzy membership function.
Figure 9.3 Flowcharts of the algorithm.
Figure 9.4 Totalcarbon emissions.
Figure 9.5 CPP carbon emissions.
Figure 9.6 Revenue and carbon emissions under different
values when
= 0....
Figure 9.7 Comparative analysis.
Figure 9.8 Carbon emissions under different
values.
Figure 9.9 Revenue and carbon emissions when
=0.44 and
is changing.
Figure 9.10 Reduction rate.
Chapter 10
Figure 10.1 Key statement of wind–hydro–thermal complementary scheduling sys...
Figure 10.2 Power plants output in different seasons when water flow is high...
Figure 10.3 Power plants output in different seasons when water flow is norm...
Figure 10.4 Power plants output in different seasons when water flow is low....
Chapter 11
Figure 11.1 Flowchart of the equilibrium strategy‐based optimization method ...
Figure 11.2 Physical model of the optimization method this chapter proposed....
Figure 11.3 Physical model of wind–solar–thermal power bundling mode in Hami...
Figure 11.4 Power plant output ratios under different scenarios.
Figure 11.5 Hourly outputs of thermal power, wind power, and solar energy in...
Figure 11.6 Objective values for the 12 scheduling scenarios and base cases....
Chapter 12
Figure 12.1 Flowchart of the bilevel structure.
Figure 12.2 Interactive evolution mechanism flowchart.
Figure 12.3 The total carbon emissions and MSWACPP carbon emissions under di...
Figure 12.4 MSWACPP carbon emissions changes under different
values.
Figure 12.5 The total carbon emissions and financial revenue under different...
Figure 12.6 Co‐combustion ratio of MSW and coal in MSWACPPs under different
Guide
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
Index
WILEY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
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Innovative Approaches towards Ecological Coal Mining and Utilization
Jiuping Xu
Heping Xie
Chengwei Lv
Authors
Prof. Jiuping Xu
Sichuan University
School of Business
No. 24 South Section 1
Yihuan Road
610065 Chengdu
China
Prof. Heping Xie
Shenzhen University
518000 Shenzhen
China
Dr. Chengwei Lv
Sichuan University
School of Business
No. 24 South Section 1
Yihuan Road
610065 Chengdu
China
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Preface
Coal has a very long and varied history which plays critical roles in the development of human beings, especially for the modern and contemporary society. Some historians believe that coal was first discovered and used around 1000 BCE and during the Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, coal experienced its most important expansion period of mining and utilization. During the development of human beings society, four epoches have been accessed: the age of farming, the age of industrial, the age of information, and the age of intelligence. In the agricultural age, coal might be the only energy resource that human beings are skilled, so its role is to act as a combustion‐supporting agent which helps human beings to live on it. During the age of industrial, due to high energy supply ratio and the steady utilization technology, coal played as the most important catalyst to support the high developing speed of human society. Recently, in the information age, coal is the stabilizing agent around the world due to its most energy demand for people. As for the future, in the age of intelligence, coal will play the role of temper agent which will continue to help further development of human being society. In another word, the history of coal mining and utilization is inextricably linked with that of the Industrial Revolution. Along with the first practical coal‐fired electric generating station, developed by Thomas Edison, went into operation in New York City in 1882, coal became the most important part in the energy structure and this situation lasts for over 100 years until the early twenty‐first century. Even nowadays, coal still shares 27.6% of the primary energy consumption which ranked the second place among all the known energy resources according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2018, and in some certain areas, such as electric power generation and steel industry, coal is still playing unmovable roles. As for electric power generation, coal is the world's dominant source, with a share of 38.1% in 2017 and in steel industry, similar situation takes place again. Another fact should be highlighted is that after several years of free fall, the coal market experienced a mini‐revival in 2018, with both global consumption and production increasing and at the same time, with consideration of that the world proved coal reserves are currently sufficient to meet 134 years of global production, much higher than the ratio for oil and gas. As coal is abundantly available, affordable, reliable, geographically well distributed and easy and safe to transport, its markets are well functioning and responsive to changes in supply and demand. It is convinced that coal will still be the most important and wide‐used energy resource in the following decades.
However, everything in this world has their own two sides and when we evaluating the position and importance of coal along with the development of human beings, its positive influence should never be the only thing which should be focused on and the negative perspective should also be paid attention to. The major challenges facing coal are concerned with its environmental impacts. These include the release of pollutants, such as oxides of sulphur and nitrogen (SOx and ), and particulate and trace elements, such as mercury and at the same time, greenhouse gas emission is another troublesome thing that must be highlighted right now. According to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2018 and the data from the World Bank, the total carbon emissions amount in 2017 reached 33 444.0 million tonnes which is 1.6% more compared to 2016 and in which the using of coal shared over 40%. Many researchers around the world noticed this critical problem and appealed to reduce or even forbid using of coal. However, this is not realistic mainly due to that for most regions in the world, coal shared over half of its primary energy consumption and the equipments for coal mining and utilization there are almost made up within the 30 years. For such regions, they cannot pay for the forbidding using of coal. Other researchers claim that some new technologies such as carbon capture and storage should be focused and put into practice. It is convinced that such hard technologies are quite efficient in reducing the carbon emissions and have already used in many developed countries and regions. However, the most challenges for such hard technologies are the economic efficiency and feasibility and they are too expensive for the most developing countries and regions which are the main users of coal.
Based on what was discussed above, it can be concluded that coal will still be critical for the development of human beings in the following decades and its harm on the environment should also be faced squarely. The performance of existing pathways and methods toward such issues are not satisfied and some more innovative approaches are needed. The book has 11 chapters and made up with 3 main parts. Chapters 10 and 2 are the first part of this book in which the development history, current status, and future possible pathways of ecological coal mining and utilization are introduced. The second part is from Chapter 3 to Chapter 6 and in this part, the typical environmental problems in coal mining and utilization which includes the groundwater damage and coal gangue excessive accumulation issues during coal mining and air pollutant emissions and greenhouse gas emissions reduction issues during coal utilization are discussed and solved in the ecological soft path ways. The third part is from Chapter 7 to Chapter 11 in which ecological problems in the coal involved integrated energy systems will be fully considered and discussed, at the same time, several practical soft paths also will be given to cope with the actual situation.
In the second part of this book, four typical ecological problems will be researched. The first one is the coal–water conflict under the multiple coal seam production system. An equilibrium strategy‐based bilevel programming model under the co‐production in multiple coal seams situation is proposed in which both the groundwater quality and quantity protection are focused, the equilibrium between environmental protection and economic development is analyzed, and the relationship and conflicts among the different stakeholders which includes the authority and collieries are taken into consideration at the same time. A possibility measure involved Karush–Kuhn–Tucker condition solution method is designed to solve the proposed model, and the successful application in the Luan coal field, China, shows the efficiency and feasibility of it. According to the second one, another innovative approach which makes full consideration of the impacts of seasonal changes on the groundwater level and production plans of collieries is proposed. A mining quota competition mechanism is built through this approach in which the authority allocates the initial mining quota to each sub‐colliery and then, collieries can determine suitable production schemes for each season to improve the total environmental protection performance for the purpose of competing for as much mining quota as possible. Each colliery's mining plans are fed back to the authority, which adjusts the scheme based on the performance of each colliery. After a further adjustment, the mining quota allocation scheme is returned to collieries again, which changes their own mining plans based on this new quota. This process is repeated several times until a final scheme acceptable to both the authority and all collieries is agreed on. The proposed method is then used in the Yanzhou coal field, China, and achieves a satisfied objective. The above two research problems focus on the water environment problem along with the coal production and at the same time, the third research problem will focus on the solid pollution issues caused by coal production. To reduce the coal gangue accumulation amount and its damage on the soil and groundwater in the large‐scale coal field, an innovative approach which integrated the equilibrium decision‐making model and geographic information system (GIS) is proposed to identify and select the most suitable coal gangue facility construction site under the 3R principle (Reducing, Reusing, and Recycling). In this approach, the GIS technology is first employed to identify the possible candidate site of coal gangue facility and then an equilibrium strategy‐oriented bilevel programming model is designed to make both the local authority and the sub‐collieries as an integrated decision system to select the most suitable one. A real‐world case study at Yanzhou coal field, China, is conducted and the results show that such approach has wonderful potential to reduce the coal gangue accumulation amount. The last research problem in the second part of this book will focus the air pollution problem as well as the greenhouse gas emissions issued in the coal utilization period. To improve the emission performance of coal‐fired power plant (CPP) which is known as the most serious pollution source of the atmospheric environment, especially for reducing the carbon emissions amount from CPP, an integrated innovative decision‐making system which includes the coal purchasing, blending, and distributing is conducted with the purpose of minimizing the total carbon emissions amount and the operational cost simultaneously.
The third part of this book consists of five chapters from Chapter 7 to Chapter 11, in which the ecological problems caused by the production and utilization of coal involved integrated energy system are researched. The first research topic in this part is the co‐reducing multiple kinds of air pollutants from coal combustion. The total carbon emissions amount and the total P emissions amount are taken into consideration at the same time, and the sufficient electric power supply and the economic benefit are also focused. A real‐world case study at Sichuan Province, China, is employed and the results shows that such innovative coal blending method has a good performance in co‐reducing carbon emissions and P emissions. The second research topic is to improve the emissions performance and energy efficiency during coal mining. A real‐world case study at Chaohua Colliery, China, is then discussed which would be the demonstration of the efficiency of the proposed approach. The third research topic in this part is with the purpose of improving the emissions performance of the coal involved electric power generation systems from the regional perspective, and an equilibrium strategy based on a hydro‐wind‐thermal complementary system with consideration of the cooperation of hydro power plants, wind power plants, and CPP is proposed. The randomness of seasonal wind speeds, the water flow uncertainty, and the CPP operational decisions are integrated into a whole decision‐making model, and the steady power supply, minimizing the pollutants emissions amount, and the highest possible economic benefit are setting as the objective functions at the same time. Such decision‐making system can make full utilization of the steady output of electric in CPP to offset the volatility of wind power and hydro power generation and at the same time, the cleanliness of the latter can just to neutralize the heavy pollution of the former. The Bijie City in China is employed as the real‐world case to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed approach.
With its emphasis on problem‐solving and practical application, this book is ideal for researchers, practitioners, engineers, graduate students, and upper‐level undergraduates with coal mining and utilization backgrounds in applied mathematics, management science, operations research, and engineering management.
Jiuping Xu, Heping Xie, Chengwei Lv
September 2020
Acknowledgments
This work is supported by the National Key Basic Research Development Plan (973 Program, Grant N0.2011CB201200), the Funds for Creative Research Groups of China (Grant No. 50221402), the National Social Sciences Foundation Monumental Projects (Grant No. 17ZDA286), and the National Funds for Distinguished Young Scientists of China (Grant No. 70425005). The authors want to take this opportunity to thank the researchers from Sichuan University, particularly, Liming Yao, Yi Lu, Ziqiang Zeng, Fengjuan Wang, Rui Qiu, Xiaoling Song, Jingqi Dai, Lurong Fan, Ning Ma, Wen Gao, Qian Huang, and Qing Feng. Authors would like to express a special acknowledgment to all editor boards of the Global Physical Sciences in Wiley, especially for Program Manager Dr. Lifen Yang, the senior managing editor Ms. Katherine Wong, the project editor Ms. Shirly Samuel and content refinement specialist, Abisheka Santhoshini for their wonderful cooperation and helpful comments. This book has benefited from the consultation of many references and the authors would like to thank all of these authors here. Finally, the authors express their deep gratitude to anonymous reviewer for their kind support and valuable insights and information from whom the authors have received significant enlightenment in the ecological coal mining and utilization.
1Technical Developing Pathway of Ecological Coal Mining
It is believed that since BCE 1000, human beings had already begun to conduct coal mining and its relative activities and in these early years, coal mining was small‐scale, nonstandard, experience‐based, and inefficient. Such coal mining behavior was relative feasible at that time mainly due to that the demand of coal was very small. However, things began to change since the eighteenth century along with the flare‐up of the Industrial Revolution which was first began in Britain and spread around all the Europe and North America soon after. As it is known, one of the most important changes that the Industrial Revolution brings to the human beings on the technology perspective was the availability of coal to power steam engines and this great invention promoted the rapid expansion of the international trade by building the coal‐fed steam for the railways and steamships. As a result, the demand on coal experienced an extremely rapid rising and the former coal mining technologies were dead out and then in 1880s the coal cutting machines were introduced which was the milestone of the modern coal mining and later in 1912, the surface coal mining also welcomed its new chapter by the invention of the steam shovels. It can be concluded that coal mining technologies directly affect coal mining quantity and quality, which in turn affect global energy supplies and, on another hand, coal mining has already made a series of environmental problems which are gaining more and more attention around the world and the environmental‐friendly‐oriented ecological coal mining technologies and methods are needed in urgent. In this chapter, for the purpose of better understanding of the developing pathway of coal mining from the technological paradigmatic development perspective, a general data analysis was conducted. Through this analysis, the main coal mining technology developing stages can be summarized clearly and using the S‐curve‐oriented prediction method, the main development direction for coal mining technologies in the following years can be identified.
1.1 Background Introduction
Coal is one of the most abundant, affordable, and readily combustible energy resources all over the world and is consumed more than 53 million tonnes of oil equivalent (mtoe) per year, with a proportion of 28.1% on current global primary energy [Ye et al., 2013, British Petroleum, 2017, WCA, 2017b]. Although renewable energy is developing in an increasing speed, its consumption only accounts for 10% of total global primary consumption. As a result, power generated by coal is still expected to dominate in the global energy structure. While the use of coal causes severe environmental problems, concerns about global energy supplies have grown over the past 15 years with rapid urbanization and industrialization of economy in developing countries; therefore, it is predicted that the demand for coal will remain stable in the short and medium term [WCA, 2017a].
The global coal reserves are 11.139 billion tonnes, with the reserves to production () ratio of over 153 [British Petroleum, 2017], indicating the huge potential of coal resource exploitation. The energy return on investment (EROI) has been found to be a useful measure to assess resource availability [Hall et al., 2014, Court and Fizaine, 2017]. This term is the ratio of the amount of energy delivered by a given process to the amount of energy consumed, and obviously the higher the EROI, the greater the net energy delivered to society for economic growth [Hall et al., 2014]. The long‐term EROI estimates for global coal production show a rising trend, indicating that the global coal production is expected to peak between 2025 and 2045, which means that coal exploitation remains significant EROI potential [Court and Fizaine, 2017]. To directly assess future global coal production capacity, a technological diffusion model was developed and used to simulate the prediction of coal product capacity. It has been found that coal is anticipated to continue to make up a considerable share of global prime energy to meet the energy demands related to technological development.
Since the demand for coal exploitation will remain high in the future, there is also the danger of exacerbating the accompanying environmental problems, especially as majority of the known coal reserves will have to be mined underground [Griffith and Clarke, 1979]. However, traditional underground coal mining practices have caused serious environmental problems such as water aquifer pollution and land surface subsidence in Australia and China, which has brought social and health problems to these regions and their surroundings [Kapusta and Stanczyk, 2011]. Due to the current limitations of coal mining technology, 85% of the world's coal resources cannot be mined by conventional methods [PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2011]. Therefore, it is necessary to increase the research on coal mining practices with high technical efficiency and environmental friendliness.
With the rapid development of science and technology, there are more and more studies on the future of coal mining and many processes and technological innovations have been developed [Scott et al., 2010, Bise, 2013]. Especially, significant progress has been made in coal seam mining methods and other difficulties associated with severe inclinations, instabilities and complex geological structures, and key problems related to deep mine mining pressure control, gas and thermal pollution governance, and tunnel arrangements have been partially solved [Saghafi, 2012, Atay et al., 2014]. However, despite the remarkable development of coal mining technology in recent decades, there has been few paradigm investigations due to the absence of a systematic analytical framework.
The technological paradigm was first proposed by Dosi based on Kuhn's scientific paradigm theory and it has proven to be a reliable method for studying past trends and predicting future possibilities [Kuusi and Meyer, 2007, Ivanova and Leydesdorff, 2015]. Dosi also proposed a technology trajectory to track technology progress within the paradigm and the economic and technological trade‐offs required. Subsequently, many studies have applied this method to elucidate the operation and dynamic development within the paradigm, and some useful results have been obtained [Rashid et al., 2013, Chen et al., 2015]. Motivated by previous studies, this chapter uses the technological paradigm theory to determine the coal mining technology road map, puts forward a coal mining technology paradigm, and reveals the long‐term technological development dynamics, and thus provides guidance for future mining technology development and coal policy management.
In order to guide the research development direction of the potential coal mining technology paradigm, two steps were taken. Firstly, based on bibliometrics methods, a generalized data analysis system was developed to qualitatively analyze the keyword trend of coal mining technology publications and map the knowledge network. The Web of Science™ core collection was selected as the main database to search relevant literature on coal mining technology, then CiteSpace was used to analyze the textual data of relevant literature in the database [Chen, 2016]. These procedures could establish a coal mining technological paradigm that identifies production development trends and coal mining technologies that should pay attention to, which formed the basis of the proposed integrated coal mining development system.
1.2 Coal Mining Technology Development
In this section, to fully understand the long‐term coal mining technological development dynamics and future trends so as to comprehensively review the development history of coal mining technology and to provide guidance for the development of mining technology in the future, an analysis approach based on literature mining is developed, which uses the data from the Web of Science database and the CiteSpace software to conduct cluster and identification analysis.
1.2.1 Literature Analyses
Scientific literatures are always the most important carrier of the critical and frontier discovery of research for most topics and research area and as for coal mining technology, this situation is absolutely true. However, it is difficult to conveniently and effectively to access and summarize the coal mining technology developing history and trend through the traditional literature analysis method which mainly due to that the relative knowledge and information are always embodied in the large amount of the published literatures. Literature mining has proven to be a useful method for elucidating major trends across time in published scientific literature and for the building of topic maps [De Bruijn and Martin, 2002]. In this section, a generalized data analysis system is developed from previous research to reveal the coal mining technological development trends.
1.2.1.1 Data Analysis System
The literature on coal mining technology has a long history of nearly 90 years, meanwhile considering the range and depth of research in this field, it is difficult to identify knowledge gaps or explore future research possibilities, thus, an effective analytical method is necessary. The citation indexing of scientific literature suggested by Garfield has proved to be useful in identifying similar research areas [Garfield and Merton, 1979]. A citation index is a comprehensive result based on journal articles, keywords, publication dates, and abstracts, according to which the impact of a citation in a specific field can be determined [Robinson‐García et al., 2015]. Such a method has applied in many other areas. For example, Kajikawa et al. used a citation‐based method to study the structural changes in sustainable biomass and bioenergy [Kajikawa and Takeda, 2008] and Liu et al. used keyword co‐word networks to identify the intellectual emerging trends in the research on innovation systems [Liu et al., 2015]. The successful application of the citation indexing method prompts the authors to apply it to make a literature analysis of coal mine technology. As illustrated in Figure 1.1, a generalized data analysis system composed of four interrelated links (objective determination, data collection, data preparation, and data analysis) is developed conceptually. Keyword co‐word analysis has been widely used to examine and understand knowledge development dynamics [Tian et al., 2008]. A quantitative and visual knowledge map can be formed by combining keyword‐based bibliometric and network analyses [Choi et al., 2011, Kim et al., 2016]. Therefore, a keyword analysis was carried out using scientific publication keyword co‐word networks, for the sake of visualizing the global coal mining technological development dynamics and identify future trends.
Figure 1.1 A generalized data analysis system.
Table 1.1 Selection criteria.
Search query:
TI = (coal mining) OR
TS = (coal mining AND (method* OR technology* OR approach*
OR systems* OR develop* OR trend*))
Language:
English
Publication type:
All document type
Time span:
1990–2017 *
Coverage:
Science citation indexes
Note that the WoS has no keywords for articles published prior to 1991. Our analysis of the changes in research frontiers and topics was therefore confined to post‐1990 ISs research.
The data acquisition module in the proposed analysis system inquired the Web of Science core collection database in January 2018 to identify the most relevant information. An advanced search was used, as shown in Table 1.1. When the search completed, articles, essays, book reviews, reviews, and editorial material were selected. After filtering, 3807 related articles were downloaded to form a text file, and then the CiteSpace analysis tool was used to identify all records and cited references to visualize the dynamics, patterns, and emerging trends of coal mining technology [Chen, 2016].
1.2.1.2 Knowledge Diagram
This chapter aims to reveal the development trend and research frontier of coal mining technology, thus a keyword co‐word analysis was adopted. Keyword co‐occurrence mapping is based on the keyword co‐occurrence analysis method that explores theme variations across search fields by measuring the occurrence frequency of item pairs [Liu et al., 2015]. After standardization of similar or different words with the same meaning, CiteSpace was used to generate the keyword co‐word network. As demonstrated in Figure 1.2, the simplified slice network generated by the minimum spanning tree (MST) algorithm consists of 790 nodes and 1021 links. The coal mining technology keywords knowledge diagram is then generated in the time zone view to focus on the evolution of knowledge over time, clearly showing how research was being updated and influences of mutual research [Chen et al., 2015]. As shown in Figure 1.2, the main keywords and associated frequencies are displayed along the time axis. Each node represents a different keyword, the size of each node denotes the co‐occurrence frequency of the corresponding keyword, and each line indicates the co‐occurrence relationship between the keywords.
As can be seen, coal miner (53) was a popular research focus around 1990, fully mechanized caving (13) became an important research topic from 1996, ecological and sustainable keywords have been prime research areas since 2004, and underground coal gasification (UCG) (94) has been focused on since 2006. After 2007, there was an obvious increase in renewable energy research with the appearance of keywords such as geothermal, solar energy utilization, and hydrogen production. Coal mining methods have also changed significantly over time, with opencast coal mining (11), long wall mining (14), and underground coal mining (57) appearing in sequence alongside some geographical focus such as China (103), United States (51), India (34), and Poland (19).
Figure 1.2 Timezone view for coal mining technology keywords diagram.
As can be seen from Figure 1.2, with the development history of coal mining technology, three main stages can be summarized. In the first stage, which lasted until early 2000, traditional coal mining based on large‐scale human labor was the focus of research. After that, the second stage lasted for nearly 15 years took place, in which the fully mechanized caving technology was the most popular research topic, and in the third stage, from then to now, the UCG was the most important research area. Similar developing trends can be found in many other documents, not only in scientific literature, but also in reports or development plans. For example, a number of international conferences have discussed this issue and agreed that, a kind of clean coal technology, i.e. UCG, will be studied in many countries, such as Australia, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, Canada, Italy, the United States, and China [WCI, 2007, van der Riet, 2008]. In addition, the World Bank has reviewed clean coal mining technology from world experience and made implications for India and suggested that enough attention should be paid to UCG [The World Bank, 2008]. For China, one of the main coal producers, the government also encouraged to develop UCG in the future in the report of the 13th five‐year plan for the development of coal industry [NEA NDRC, 2016]. Therefore, no matter from the results of literature mining, or the focus of relevant institutions, governments, and conferences, a common conclusion can be drawn that UCG will receive great attention in the future.
1.2.2 Three Periods of Coal Mining Technology
Technological innovation is essentially an iterative process with its push on industrial development and is triggered by the new market or service opportunities toward technological invention [Garcia and Calantone, 2002]. Technological innovation is in a cyclic process, where a new innovation is introduced for the first time and an improved innovation is reintroduced [Cheng et al., 2015]. This process is affected by multiple physical properties. With the increasing of those, a certain outcome point under the physical laws is obtained, namely S‐curve [Cheng et al., 2015, Adner and Kapoor, 2016].
Additionally, from the systematic view, many other economic, social, institutional, and political factors can also be considered, and it may cause different technologies coexisting. Based on the accumulation of these factors, a technological paradigm can be naturally formed [Dosi, 1982]. Technology paradigm can determine the starting point and limit of new technology innovation cycles. Under the guidance of the specific paradigm, technological activities form the technological trajectory [Dosi, 1982]. As a result, technology evolution is a long‐term series of technological paradigms, and each complete technological paradigm has an S‐shaped curve (Figure 1.3). Based on the characteristics of different period, it could be roughly divided into three stages: competition, diffusion, and shift [Dosi, 1982, Christensen, 1992, 2013].
For the purpose of adequate appreciation of the long‐term development of coal mining technology, it is necessary to explain the polymerization evolution of coal mining technology. Integrating literature analysis with S‐curve theory of technology paradigm, coal mining technology paradigm can be divided into three stages: competition, diffusion, and shift, with each stage being characterized by different technologies, as described in Figure 1.4.
Figure 1.3 Three stages of the technological paradigm.
Figure 1.4 Technological paradigm for coal mining technology.
1.2.2.1 Competition Phase
Direct coal mining or manual mining is one of the oldest, most common, and versatile coal mining forms currently [Astakhov et al., 1990]. At first, coal mining was small scale, and coal was either buried on the surface or near the surface; consequently, drift mining and bell pit mining mainly depending on manual labor and the application of simple original equipment were the typical mining methods [Musson and Robinson, 1969]. Later, in order to satisfy the growing need brought about by the rapid development of international trade in the nineteenth century, the number of coal‐fed steam engines for railways and ships were expanding. When coal became the major fuel supporting the industry, the demand for coal grew sharply and small‐scale technologies were inadequate, consequently, coal mining developed from simple surface mining to surface and deep well mining. Even more important is that coal mining was implementing the machines, which greatly improve the production conditions. Taking an example, blasting technology was utilized for drilling and mining in horizontal tunneling lanes, which had a significant influence on the mining efficiency [Flinn et al., 1986]. Coal production reached 5 million tonnes in 1850. But manual labor remained the main mining technology as the machines were costly and unaffordable. Accident also occurred to coal mining and the miners were always in danger due to the worse working conditions and safety management.
1.2.2.2 Diffusion Phase
As mechanical and electrical technologies developed, safety production and high‐efficient production were the requirements of the coal mining. The manual labor and the application of simple original equipment were gradually replaced by mechanized mining technologies. The coal mining machinery was specially designed to cut coal, the underground transportation adopted the conveyor, the ventilation adopted the fan, and the pumping equipment ensures the good gangue discharge. All of them improved the production efficiency and the overall safety production level of the coal mining [Stefanko, 1983].
Large complex systems were involved in modern coal mining, especially for underground coal mining with multiple production links, such as coal cutting, tunneling, transportation, ventilation and drainage, and surface production. But each mechanized working procedure was conducted as a separate production link and lacked comprehensive coordination. In order to integrate these procedures, fully mechanized mining technology occupied the modern coal mining, which lead to labor intensity reduction and safety improvement [Jinhua, 2006]. The United Kingdom was the first one to conduct fully mechanized coal mine equipped with self‐advancing hydraulic supports in 1953, driving the development of various mechanized work faces and complete equipment packages in Germany, Japan, and China [Tian et al., 2006].
The stability of production became a new factor that restricted productivity after fully mechanized mining technology improved production efficiency significantly. In order to realize efficient production and reduce system risk, the stable automatic control production technology is adopted for the complete mining process. It had the ability to decrease the production staff needed down the shaft, further optimize the production system, increase mine safety, and save energy [Ralston et al., 2014]. At this time, information management had been employed to gather real‐time production and supply information for fault prediction and disaster warnings [Guo et al., 2016].
1.2.2.3 Shift Phase
The efficient development and utilization of coal resources have played an important role in the world economic development; however, it meantime causes some issues such as environmental pollution and ecological damage and further limit sustainable development. With these problems reaching a critical level in the past few decades, the coal industry must move toward a new mode of sustainable development.
Latest studies have found that UCG technology provides a possible economic choice for extracting energy from coal resources while removing many environmental problems caused by deep mining [Son et al., 2016]. UCG technology converts in situ coal into a usable syngas to generate electricity or to produce liquid hydrocarbon fuels, natural gas surrogates, and valuable chemical products [Yang et al., 2016]. As is shown in Figure 1.5, UCG technology is realized by air and/or oxygen and steam injection into linked injection wells. The coal is then fired and a sequence of controlled chemical transformations takes place in the gasification channel, which is usually divided into three regions: oxidization, reduction and dry distillation, and pyrolysis [Samdani et al., 2016].
Figure 1.5 The UCG process.
In view of the process, UCG technology has many advantages over traditional coal mining and gasification technology [Su et al., 2016, Pei et al., 2016a]. First, laborer work underground is not needed and the general safety is improved. Second, when all the coal has been gasified, there is no need for surface gasifiers, consequently the surface footprints of the UCG plant are significantly reduced and related dust emissions and coal transport, treatment and storage costs are avoided. Third, UCG technology is capability to take advantage of coal seams which are so deep or so thin that they cannot be economically mined by conventional underground methods. According to the assessment, the United States, Australia, India, and China separately has over 5 million petajoules [PJ], 2.3 million PJ, 1.9 million PJ, and 2.2 million PJ of recoverable UCG syngas. With the application of UCG technology, there is a huge increase in the global recoverable coal reserves [PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2011, Su et al., 2016]. Based on the above advantages, UCG technology is recognized as a promising clean coal technology to help coal mining much securer, cleaner, and more economical. In addition to UCG technology, other potential technologies have also been come up to handle security and environmental issues. Qian presented a green coal mining technology system for China's coal industry which recommended taking measures to minimize the effects on the environment and develop an environmental‐friendly recycling coal economy from the early stage of coal mining operations [Minggao, 2010].
1.3 Discussion
A paradigm is recognized as a comprehensive model that a specific scientific community must follow in a certain kind of scientific activities, which includes common world outlook, basic theory, paradigm, method, means, standard, etc. It was discovered through literature mining that the development of coal mining technology is on a trajectory that conforms to the S‐curve of traditional technology paradigm, thus clarifying the paradigm of coal mining technology. Although there is few innovative coal mining technology paradigms from the literature analysis, latest researches pay attention to sustainable development, ecological sensitivity, energy system, renewable energy, and energy recovery and point out the direction of future technological innovation.
There is a need for a paradigm shift, which is a world view and behavior shared by a group of researchers engaged in a science. The term paradigm shift first appeared in The Structure of Scientific Revolution, the representative work of Thomas Kuhn. Paradigm shift, the fifth and final step in the Kuhn Cycle (Figure 1.6), is to break out of the original constraints and restrictions and to open up new possibilities by grafting on a higher level view such as a System Improvement Process [Thwink.org, 2014a, Ashkenazi and Lotker, 2014]. With coal expected to be a key driver of development, it will remain an important role in urbanization and industrialization [Thwink.org, 2014b]. However, exploiting and utilizing coal give rise to serious environmental issues. As coal occupies an important position, it cannot be abandoned. Therefore, the coal mine industry should keep a pace of sustainable development. UCG technology could assist in moving toward a path of coal industry sustainable development. UCG technology is a promising clean coal technology to help coal mining much securer, cleaner, and more economical with the ability to recover currently unmineable coal resources [Thwink.org, 2014a]. Although this technology is still not satisfactory, it could be greener and more efficient when a paradigm shift happens.
Figure 1.6 The Kuhn Cycle and the System Improvement Process.
Three main obstacles to achieve the UCG‐based paradigm shift exist. First, realistic factors which are vital for complete UCG systems fall short of the requirement. Currently, the energy recovery rate is just approximately 30– 60%, at relatively low rate compared with open pit mining [Su et al., 2016]. Besides, the EROI index, which defines the relationship between the human‐made capital energy required to produce energy and the amount of energy, is still unsatisfactory compared with other energy sources such as crude oil. Second, related environmental problems are caused as UCG technology involves geomechanical, hydrogeological, thermal, and geochemical process [Yang et al., 2007, Pei et al., 2016b]. Groundwater pollution is the most highlighted issue. A large number of pollutants, such as phenol, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, benzene, carbon dioxide, ammonia, and sulfide, will be produced in the process of coal gasification. These pollutants diffuse and penetrate into the surrounding strata in the coal seam, which will pollute the surrounding groundwater. Moreover, underground caves are created in UCG technology and further rock and other materials cannot be supported; as a consequence, subsidence happens. Third, the desired syngas quality and composition are quite difficult to achieve [Imran et al., 2014, Pei et al., 2016b]. Syngas qualities have relations with the properties of the coal bearing strata, and the gasification conditions such as the size of the gasification cavities, the spacing, the moisture content, pressure, and temperature. Although hard technology can validly handle those obstacles [Pei et al., 2016b, Su et al., 2016], it is expensive and beyond capability of the developing countries which heavily rely on coal [Liu et al., 2007, Imran et al., 2014]. Therefore, integrating current technologies is more achievable option at present.
In order to realize sustainable and efficient coal mining and take full advantage of renewable energy, a more reasonable approach is necessary. Due to important role of UCG in future mining projects, an environmentally sustainable multiple energy comprehensive mining method based on ecological coal mining is proposed, graphically represented in Figure 1.7. Below are some highlights of the features for this approach.
As UCG technology causes carbon emissions, carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology is applied to capture these carbon emissions, and consequently the environment is improved [Asif and Muneer, 2007]. Combined UCG‐CCS technology offers an approach to get better energy recovery from coal and avoid the hazardous environmental influences [Karki et al., 2010]. Specifically, after the UCG technology, there are large gaps deep underground which enable carbon emissions to be captured and stored [Khadse et al., 2007, Roddy and Younger, 2010, Tollefson and Van Noorden, 2012, Eftekhari et al., 2017]. When UCG is adopted at artificially high permeable areas such as depths underground greater than 700–800 m, carbon storage is considered to be attractive. Besides, Combined UCG‐CCS technology is related to other carbon‐intensive industries through the CO2 pipeline grid, and power plants can utilize the UCG syngas with pre‐ and/or post‐combustion capture.
For intra‐regional self‐supporting electricity supply for coal mining perspective, although wind and solar energy are widely applied to provide heating and cooling or to generate electricity, they are hardly employed in coal mining industry [Preene and Younger, 2014]. However, the integrated UCG system makes full use of the geology and geology conditions of the mine as well as the existing renewable energy sources, improving energy efficiency. Precisely, the integrated UCG system requires less or even no external power as it employs available intra‐regional renewable energies to generate power [Wang et al., 2016, Hall et al., 2011, Ramos et al., 2015].
Figure 1.7 Ecological coal mining in the future.
Moreover, the raw gas from UCG has too low energy content compared with generation standards, and requirement for pre‐processing procedure is proposed for syngas separation and purification. This system is integrated with integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC
