In the past, mine workers hundreds of meters underground, not only labor intensity, difficult working conditions, but also accompanied by floods and other dangers; Today, remote operations can be achieved with a button and a command. Behind many changes is the rapid progress of intelligent mine construction in China. Sun Qingguo, director of the Safety foundation Department of the National Mine Safety Administration, introduced the latest progress of the construction of smart mines at a regular press conference of the Ministry of Emergency Management on Monday.

The number increased rapidly. At present, there are 813 intelligent mining working faces in China, an increase of 65 percent compared with 2020. There are 477 coal mining faces, 43% more than in 2020. The number of excavation areas was 336, an increase of 109 percent compared to 2020. 29 kinds of coal mine robots have been used in more than 370 mines.

Innovation gained momentum. The first full-section rectangular intelligent roadheader in China has been successfully developed. Independent research and development of advanced 10-meter large mining height intelligent hydraulic support; Intelligent operating system of downhole exploration and drainage has been applied successively; The number of driverless vehicles in open-pit coal mines reached 146... New progress has been made in a number of intelligent mine technologies.

More policy support. The National Mine Safety Administration, in collaboration with relevant departments, issued policies such as The Guide to Intelligent Construction in Coal Mines (2021 Edition) and the Development Plan for the Robot Industry during the 14th Five-Year Plan period to promote the construction of more intelligent mines. Fourteen provinces, including Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Shandong, Henan and Shaanxi, have also issued documents to provide policy, capital and project support for the construction of intelligent mines.

Standards are improving day by day. At present, the National Mine Safety Administration has promoted the formulation of 92 relevant standards, including intelligent control system and production assistance system, guided the establishment of the National Beacon Committee's Big Data Standard Working Group mine Industry Group, organized the compilation of the Specification for Intelligent Mine Data Fusion and Sharing, and further improved the mine intelligent standard system.

Regulation is also more efficient. "We have vigorously promoted the construction of information technology, connected all the 2,611 coal mines under normal production and construction to the coal mine safety risk monitoring and early warning system, and realized the full coverage of the perception data of coal mine safety risk monitoring." Wang Duanwu, director of the Department of Science and Technology of the State Administration of Mine Safety, said.

From the practical point of view, promoting the construction of intelligent mines has effectively helped improve the level of safe production and the ability to guarantee supply in the mining field. "In the first two months of this year, mine accidents decreased by 46.8 percent nationwide. In 2021, the number of mine accidents and deaths dropped by 16 percent and 12.7 percent year-on-year, respectively, and the death rate of coal mines by one million tons hit a new low. It is worth mentioning that the national coal production increased by 5.7% year on year." Zhang Xin, deputy director of the National Mine Safety Administration, said.

On April 1 this year, the revised "coal mine safety regulations" will be formally implemented. Wang Duanwu introduced that this is a very important department regulation in the field of coal mine safety, which increases the requirement of actively promoting automatic and intelligent mining of coal mines. "We will continue to actively support the construction of smart mines and use science and technology to promote high-quality development of coal mines." (People's Daily)