Optimizing coal mine planning and design for sustainable development in the context of mass exploitation of coal deposits.

ABSTRACT

Sustainable mining practices is a concept that embeds the principles of sustainable development into the whole mine life-cycle, from exploration, extraction and processing through to mine closure. The optimization of coal mine planning and the developing a standardized design for its sustainable development is very challenging and requires more effort. The present research attempts to address the conditions of sustainability and necessary measures for sustainable development, thereby providing appropriate solutions for each stage of mining operation besides expressing the necessity of sustainable development integration at different stages of mining life cycle (MLC). The approach of systems engineering is essential to assist the sustainability goals which are integrated with the expected results. Hence a method depending more on systems engineering principles and optimization can be incorporated to attain better results. Several socio-environmental factors associated with sustainability depends on the geographic condition and few mining engineering considerations such as mine location, topography, coal seam characteristics and so on. These systems engineering approach can be further enhanced by incorporating tools like Geographic Information System (GIS), which provides more accuracy and precision of the geographic conditions of the site identified for the coal mining plan. In order to begin this way of approach towards the sustainability development and mining planning, the appropriate optimization parameters should be identified. The outcome of these optimization parameters can be also achieved by optimizing coal mining system models.