Investigations on determining and decreasing the coal loss at fully-mechanized production in Omerler underground coal mine

TKİ -GL Ömerler colliery is a fully-mechanized underground lignite mine at Tunçbilek region. The thickness of the coal seam is 8,5 meters on the average. 3 m from the base is operated by a longwall, 5,5 m is produced by caving in from the roof support frame. Caving method is an easy method in terms of operation organization. However, coal losses appear during the caving operation. Coal loss is an undesirable situation since it is a loss of national resource and it increases the risk of spontaneous combustion, also. The main idea of this PhD thesis is to find coal loss values during operation and to do research on how to decrease the loss values. In order to find the coal loss, firstly, experiments are carried out in M4 and M5 panels of the mine. These studies revealed that 24,73% of top coal and 16,64% of total reserve is left behind the face during caving operation of top coal from the roof support window. In order to examine the coal loss values in Ömerler mine, a physical model of the mine is designed. Physical models of 1/10 and 1/20 geometric scale are built and experiments are performed to figure out the coal loss in the rear of the face.Then, some modifications are made on the physical model in order to investigate how to decrease coal loss in the mine and experiments are made to find out the changes in the loss values. According to the results achieved, enlarging roof support frame and usage of rear face conveyor would decrease coal loss. Computer simulation of the mine operation is done by ARENA 2.2 simulation software. The coal loss values found in the previous experiments are employed in this simulation model. By the use of model, face production values, equipment selection, and the number of shearer loader cuts are found. Keywords: Underground mine, Coal loss, Fully-mechanized production, Physical model, Simulation