On the 28th of June, 2018, an inaugural meeting for the partners of project “Borehole mining technology development and demonstration for improving global brown coal mining competitiveness and limiting its influence on the environment”, acronym: HydroCOAL Plus, took place at the Central Mining Institute’s experimental mine “Barbara”.
The project, financed using funds from the Research Fund for Coal and Steel, is of a demonstrative character, and its goal is to test an innovative brown coal borehole mining technology through the conduction of tests in the Bełchatów mine. This novel solution utilises borehole technology and a high-pressure water stream in the coal extraction process.
The inaugural meeting was attended by representatives of the consortium: GIG, PGE GÓRNICTWO I ENERGETYKA KONWENCJONALNA S.A., POLTEGOR – Opencast Mining Institute and TU BAF FREIBERG University of Mining and Technology, as well as representatives of companies acting as project subcontractors: Consult-Mine Katowice and SIGMA. Lucas Janssen, the representative of the Research Fund for Coal and Steel, also participated in the meeting.
“Many countries in Europe make use of brown coal and have large reserves of it. Many deposits, particularly in urban areas, can be used in unconventional ways,” says professor Józef Dubiński, project director. “We are very happy that such a partnership and consortium could be formed, since we can now realise a project focused so much on practical application.”
The scope of the project encompasses laboratory tests of brown coal and surrounding rock, roof support and rock mass stability analysis, backfilling of extracted cavities, borehole mine technical feasibility and cost-effectiveness analysis, as well as complex risk analysis and determination of the influence of the technology on the environment. The “demonstrator” tests with utilise the testing grounds of experimental mine “Barbara”.
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