Evaluation of dragline mining in Indian coal mines

Abstract

Draglines have been explicitly used in coal mining for a no. of decades, either as stripper or stripper and coal extractor. As this equipment retains certain intrinsic benefits, which their rivals don’t have, they should essentially be operated in round-the-clock fashion for high productivity and low expenditures. In India, the advancement of giant surface mining projects like Bina and Jayant with setting up of high coal production targets (upto 10 MT/year) demands for systems to remove huge volume of overburden in minimum possible time. This has led to major changes in overburden/interburden excavation technology in surface coal mining from shovel mining to dragline mining. Coal India Limited (CIL), now has standardized the draglines in two sizes, namely 10/70 and 24/96 for their mines. Most mines depend on the dragline 24 hours/day, 7 days /week. In many of the coal mines, it’s the only primary stripping tool and the mine's yield is totally dependent on the dragline’s performance. For these reasons only dragline design requires a greater emphasis placed on developing component’s with higher levels of reliability and predictability so that repairs and replacement of components can be programmed at times that will minimum affect the overall mining operation. Prior to installing draglines in mines, various aspects have to be taken into consideration for selecting suitable size. To determine the production and productivity of draglines different parameters are used. These points have been discussed in detail in this thesis.