When it comes to mining, the first thing people think of is the dangerous dark mine and a group of unkempt miners. However, when a reporter from China Mining News recently came to Sanning Mining Company, a phosphate rock production company in Yichang City, Hubei Province, this traditional view that was fixed in the reporter's heart was completely subverted.
The mining area is surrounded by mountains, gurgling water, green floor, flowers in full bloom, as if in a picturesque scenic spot. The dispatchers sat in the spacious and clear command center, easily controlling the whole process of underground mining and peaceful mineral processing through VR, and could not feel that this was a mining mine.
Dispatching Command Center
This is a microcosm of Sanning Mining Co., Ltd. in the construction of green mines to create ecological wisdom mine.
"Intelligence is the proper meaning of green mines. In the process of building green mines, we have achieved underground mining without people and flat ore dressing without duty by vigorously developing intelligence, creating an ecologically intelligent mine." Wang Xueliang, general manager of the company, said with great pride.
No one in underground mining
I saw the machine busy, no trace of people. When the reporter followed Wang Xueliang to the underground mining and filling working face, as well as the crushing chamber, in addition to the roar of the machine, occasionally encountered one or two workers responsible for equipment inspection.
This is just one of the great changes brought about by the company's reliance on technological innovation.
As we all know, phosphate rock, as a non-metallic mineral, has been included in the national strategic resources, but because of its large quantity, low quality, deep resource endowment and low market value, the level of mechanization, automation and intelligence of mining has been at a low level.
There are only backward industries and no backward enterprises. In order to improve the intelligent level of mines and completely change the backwardness of traditional industries, the company began to ask science and technology. They have successively built the first academician workstation of mining industry in Hubei Province and the provincial enterprise technology center, which has normalized the technological innovation of mining enterprises, and achieved a number of major breakthroughs in related technical fields at home and abroad in the production process and technology restricting the development of phosphate mining industry.
In order to solve the technical problems of the existing mine comprehensive information platform, such as weak interface scalability, poor versatility and uneconomy, the company independently developed a new type of digital mine comprehensive information management and control platform, introduced DIMINE digital mine software system, realized the rapid construction of the mine basic information digital platform, and established the terrain surface and ore body three-dimensional model according to the geological data and borehole database respectively, according to the current progress of development, mining accuracy, cutting and mining, a three-dimensional model of mine roadway engineering and goaf is established, and the production plan is coupled, which provides technical guarantee for the high integration and centralized control of multiple subsystems related to mining, dressing and filling, and provides preconditions for the realization of full digitization, informatization and intelligence of mine production management.
The company also carried out scientific and technological innovation around the mechanized intelligent mining method of gently inclined medium-thick phosphate rock layer. They take mining automation and intelligence as the development direction, and according to the characteristics of the flat structure of the water-carrying river phosphate mine, they have introduced advanced mechanical equipment such as sandvik rock drilling, wool prying and anchor net trolley, supporting equipment and facilities such as scrapers, in-pit trucks, tape transportation, etc., developed a technical system for collaborative operation of mining equipment, safe and efficient production technology, and constructed a mine intelligent equipment platform. The company's underground crusher, belt conveyor, ventilation system and other mechanical equipment has been remote control. At the same time, in view of the characteristics of large-scale and ultra-long distances in mines, they have developed an intelligent, unmanned inspection and duty system for auxiliary processes in the mine production process, which not only effectively improves the mine energy management and equipment control level, and improves the mine operating environment, but also Optimize the process flow of integrated mine production and greatly reduce mine production management personnel.
"We also rely on the digital mine integrated information system to build a production command, scheduling management and other production VR intelligent control center, at any time to call out the geological data of each mining area, three-dimensional model, production plan. At the same time, remote control and intelligent management and control scheduling of mining equipment adapted to the digital model of the deposit are established, and production control, safety and environmental protection, water monitoring and monitoring, and high-risk post operation are remotely commanded and controlled by the ground production scheduling center. Remote and automatic ore crushing, ore chute discharge, automatic belt conveyor transportation, automatic loading, etc. are adopted. The whole production process ensures that ore does not fall to the ground, waste rock does not leave the well, tailings do not leave the tailings return to fill, automatic and intelligent substitution has been realized." Wang Xueliang said.
The comprehensive benefits brought by the reduction of underground personnel are very obvious. According to statistics, medium-sized non-metallic phosphate rock enterprises such as Sanning Mining have achieved efficiency gains of more than 1000 million yuan per year through "mechanization reduction and automation and intelligent replacement". At present, their phosphate rock has maintained a 30% profit margin despite the poor grade and sluggish market.
Big data to build a secure line of defense
Safety is the Tianzi project of mine. However, for many years, my country's mine safety has been following the traditional system to manage safety, which not only wastes a lot of time and energy, but also gets half the result with twice the effort, and fails to achieve the expected results.
"Science and technology security is the future development direction of mines, and it is also one of the main contents of intelligent mines." Wang Xueliang said that in the past few years, Sanning Mining Co., Ltd. has established an all-weather, full-coverage, and full-process safety prevention and control system from horizontal to edge and vertical to the bottom by vigorously building smart mines.
It is understood that the company has built two communication network systems, a wireless network and a wired network, and cooperated with China Telecom to build underground wireless base stations to achieve full coverage of 4G signals in major underground roadways and key caverns. At present, the two sides are cooperating to build 5G networks. They chose MOXA ring network switch to build a wired network composed of two gigabit ring network subsystems for monitoring and control. The underground environmental monitoring, positioning, IP wired telephone and video signals are processed and converted and collected into the monitoring ring network, while the underground transportation control, fan control, air regulation and air control and filling control signals are connected to the control ring network.
"The separate networking of monitoring and control networks greatly reduces mutual interference between networks and improves the accuracy and safety of production control. At the same time, the establishment of a large broadband information transmission and safety information fusion early warning system to solve the rapid mining and real-time transmission of massive data on mine safety and emission reduction is one of the basic guarantee systems for intelligent mine management and control." Wang Xueliang introduced.
Green mining to protect the ecological environment
Sanning Mining Co., Ltd. is located in the mountains, in order to protect the ecological environment, reduce the disturbance of mining on the mountain, they used the strip plus filling this more expensive mining method.
The company has built a heavy medium concentrator and a tailings cementation filling station at the pithead. The waste tailings are mixed with cement and then transported back to the underground to fill the mountain where the mining is completed. Wang Xueliang said that although filling mining is more troublesome and the cost is much higher than that of traditional mining methods, it can completely solve the problems such as the difficult use of tail mines, and at the same time reduce the disturbance to the environment and effectively protect the mountains.
"It is gray on a sunny day, mud all the way on a rainy day, like fog from a distance, and covered with soil up close" is a true portrayal of traditional mining areas, and because of this, more and more young people are far away from this industry. However, the reporter followed Wang Xueliang in the underground drive around, except for a slight pungent smell of gunpowder when shooting, basically spotless. After lifting the well, remove the overalls that cover the outside and don't even need to take a bath.
"We have strict environmental protection requirements for underground mining. Special disposal equipment has been set up at each dust point, and special dust-reducing spray equipment has been installed in important crushing chambers and alleys where vehicles are running, and intelligent control has been carried out with the mine.
Scientific and technological innovation makes Sanning Mining Company's road of wisdom wider and wider. The two technologies led by the company have filled the technical gap in the filling field of underground non-metallic mines in China. The three mining, dressing and filling related technologies independently developed will be selected as advanced applicable technologies of the Ministry of Natural Resources in 2019. Among them, the "integrated green mining and intelligent management and control technology for mining and filling of slowly inclined medium and thick phosphate strata" won the first prize of the National Green Mine Science and Technology Award in May 2018. At the same time, with the construction of "mechanization, informatization and intelligence" as the starting point, relying on scientific and technological innovation to promote the traditional non-metallic phosphate mining industry to achieve file upgrading and high-quality development, and build a new type of modern mining enterprise with green ecology, digital wisdom, safety and harmony.
When talking about the future development direction of Sanning Mining Company, Wang Xueliang said that the company will carry out deeper cooperation with industry-university-research platforms such as the expert team of Academician Gu Desheng of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, with the realization of green and intelligent mining as the starting point, based on a new starting point, further carry out in-depth research on the key technologies and applications of underground intelligent mining and charging integration in large-scale regional mines, and carry out research on safe and regional mines, constantly climb the "commanding heights" of science and technology, strive to create a benchmark for green mining, build a model for smart mines, and write a new chapter in green and smart development for mines.
This is also the goal of China's green mine construction.□
Website Editor: Gong Li
