New Techniques and Technologies in Thin Coal Seam Exploitation

Provides an up-to-date overview of the Polish and international experience in the area of thin coal seam mining with an emphasis on implementation of the plow technology in mining. The implementation of the plow technology in Poland is performed by young engineers for whom the automated extraction system presents itself as a great challenge showing the direction of future developments: a production mining face manned by a skeleton crew, fully utilizing the potential offered by the information technology. They create new ways and means of running the production processes, which are successfully used together with the new generation plows. Successive generations of young mining engineers entering their careers are equipped with a new type of ability and, most of all, awareness which is characterized by a new understanding of reality, in which "real" is what is on the screen. They are the guarantee that this direction of research and the drive towards minimizing human involvement in the underground production chores will receive increasing focus and will remain the area of development. The experiences to-date of three mines (KWK Zofiowka, KWK Jas-Mos, and LW Bogdanka SA) show that there is a real potential for the Polish companies to join in the research aimed at developing new plow installations.