China
Coal mined in 2018: 3,523.2 million tons (almost 56% of global production).
Coal reserves: 114.5 billion tons (12.84%).
Chinese port of Qinhuangdao. Photo: my-china.ru
China traditionally remains the world's largest consumer of black fuel. In the first quarter of 2019, one ton of steam coal in China cost $98, down 18.7%. At the same time, coal production increased to 812 million tons (+0.3%).
The amount of coal imported into the country as a whole fell by 1% (74.63 million tons), but coking coal was imported by 36% more than in the same period last year (16.42 million tons). In turn, 58.21 million tons of thermal coal were delivered to the PRC during this time - 8% less.
If at the end of 2018 in the key port of China Qinhuangdao
there were 5.65 million tons of coal reserves, then at the end of the 1st quarter of 2019 - 6.4
million tons. In total, the port, together with the ports of Jingtang and Caofeidian, has coal reserves of
by the end of the 1st quarter of 2019, there were 16.2 million tons, which is 2 million tons more than in
the same period last year.
In addition, in China, the generation of thermal power plants increased by 2%, by 12% - by hydroelectric power plants, by 26% - by nuclear power plants, by 7% - by renewable energy sources.
By science
However, these are scattered facts mixed with emotions.
SUEK decided to approach the matter in all science and get to the root of the problem.
From the outside it may seem that this is a complex and increasingly speculative scheme, but if you put all of the above into practice, an interesting tactic comes to light.
For example, SUEK Kuzbass has 11 service companies.
That is, there are moments when responsibility is at the junction - when transferring orders between the enterprise and the contractor. Such a concept as a communicative risk is included - and it is at this moment that dangerous incidents arise.
Therefore, service companies in SUEK are involved in decision-making.
It is not only about the approach and policy of the company. Specific technical solutions are involved in its implementation.
In particular, SUEK Kuzbass operates a software product developed by the VIST Group, which the coal miners have worked on for themselves.
According to internal statistics of SUEK Kuzbass, in 2017 the company registered 719 OPS, 22% were retained at the inception stage, 13% reached the development stage, and only 2% turned out to be implemented. This information is perfectly correlated with the well-known.
The peak of injuries occurred in the company in 2004, when SUEK had just started working in the region. In the news with a mourning tape, SUEK Kuzbass was last noted already in 2013, when 8 miners died at a mine in the Prokopyevsk district. Since then, only more positive news. It turns out that the tactic is effective?
What the forecast says
Experts believe that the cost of thermal coal on the global market will remain stable throughout 2019: the average quarterly quotations will remain low at $90 per ton.
In general, the fall in coal prices was influenced by an increase in reserves and a decline in production in Asia and Europe. It is worth mentioning that the sharp decline in prices (about 60%) for LNG in Asian countries also played its role.
In the long term, the price of coal will continue to fall for another reason: the slowdown in the global industrial economy. Moreover, analysts believe that this factor is the main threat to further cost reduction.
Many countries will reduce coal imports, which will certainly affect key suppliers such as Russia and India. Competition will become tougher and, accordingly, the price of coal will decrease.
Also, the market situation will be affected by the growth of domestic
production of China, the largest coal importer, which will entail an excess
offer in the Chinese market.
In addition, the development of environmental initiatives, such as, for example, the refusal of key countries from coal in favor of renewable energy, will play an important role. The fall in the cost of coal may also continue due to the introduction of new restrictions on export products.
For example, already in 2020, analysts predict a fall in Australian quotes to about $70-74 per ton. Exports of major coal suppliers will fall by 1.5% this year and by 1.8% next year.
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people and coal
Actually, even without any regulatory documents, it is clearer than ever that the coal industry is key for Kuzbass and the region intends to develop it in the near future.
But still, there is a written fixation: today the Program for the social development of the region until 2035 is being developed, which also includes the Strategy for the Development of the Coal Industry.
It has two key aspects.
The first is, of course, subsoil use. And the second is the comfortable living of the population: both the one in the mines and the one next to it.
If you think about this message, then the point is not in large numbers, but in the fact that we are talking about human lives, that someone simply will not return home from the slaughter.
Russia produces 420 million tons, and 20 dead miners is an agreed payment, indicators within the framework of statistics.
Why miners die
The fact that the issue of coal mining safety is so widely discussed is an achievement in itself.
It cannot be said that the industrialists sit idly by and silently consider whether the mine fits into the world and Russian statistics in terms of the number of systemic injuries.
Manufacturers are working on the creation of increasingly complex and sophisticated control, automation and warning systems, these systems are being introduced at mines, and as can be seen from all the same statistics, there is a result.
The key question is why do mine accidents happen in the first place? In Issue 1 of 2018, we published the article “This is my prey!”, In which we tried to understand the causes of the accident at the Ulyanovsk mine.
It turned out to be a whole tangle: from miner's fatalism ("The mine will take everything differently") to the negligence of the owners.
All this has its place. For example, experienced miners say that miners smoke underground, which, for obvious reasons, is strictly prohibited.
In pursuit of profit, miners ignore safety requirements - with the tacit consent of their superiors. As a rule, after the tragedy, information emerges that the management of the enterprise did not finish something there, did not finish watching it - and as a result, a new count of the dead.
Or another significant point - the movement of workers in mine workings.
EVRAZ specialists analyzed the situation at their mines, trying to identify the most traumatic areas.
And 39% of cases occurred during the period of movement of workers from mine workings and back.
In the article “Transport of underground cities” (published in No. 2, 2018), we have already raised this issue. Industry experts said that the process of delivering workers to the face is not always organized properly, and even the miners themselves violate safety regulations.
According to experts, there are coal enterprises in Russia, where miners go to the duty station 5 km to develop
As a result, the worker is tired, attention, concentration are not the same, then another 5 km back - it is not surprising that injuries occur
And even more so: one worker left the face, the second went there, they did not exchange information about what was happening on the spot, as a result, the risk of danger increases.
How to correctly calculate the bulk density of sand, coal, cement Repair and construction
The bulk density of a material is determined by the ratio of the mass of the material to the volume it occupies. For coal, sand and cement, it is expressed in kg / cu. m. Bulk density refers to the volume of material that it occupies in an uncompacted state.They scooped it up with an excavator bucket, poured it - here it is, the “bulk” density.
Sand
Sand is far from always clean, very often it is not washed or washed poorly, here it remains only to rely on the conscience of the supplier, well, do not forget to control the quality of the sand yourself, at least visually: how much debris is in the sand and whether blurred clods of clay are visible. Below is the bulk density for clean, dry sand.
If the sand is wet, then the weight of 1 cu. m of this material can be safely increased by 10-12%.
Bulk density for clean dry sand:
- Quarry sand: 1500 kg.
- River sand: 1600 kg.
- Sand quartz: 1700 kg.
You can roughly check the bulk density of sand as follows.
Weigh an empty bucket, then fill the bucket by pouring sand from a certain height, do not compact the sand in the bucket.
Weigh the bucket, then divide 1000 by the liter of the bucket and multiply that number by the weight of the sand, excluding the weight of the bucket.
For example, a bucket of 12 liters, empty it weighs 1 kg, filled with sand 19 kg. We divide 1000:12 = 83.33 (the number of such buckets in 1 cubic meter by volume). 19-1=18 (weight of sand in a bucket). 18 x 83.33 \u003d 1499.9 kg of this sand occupies a volume of 1 cubic meter. m.
Cement
The bulk density of cement of different grades (M200, M300, M400, M500) will be approximately the same; when caking, the bulk density increases significantly, and this happens quite quickly. For the convenience of mutual settlements, it is considered that 1 cu. m of high-quality cement weighs 1300 kg.
Although this is not entirely true: freshly produced M500 cement has a bulk density of 1100 kg / cu. m, and caked (but still usable) 1600 kg / cu. m.
You can check the bulk density of cement by analogy with sand.
Coal
With coal, everything is much more complicated, since the bulk density is very dependent on the size of the fractions, but with coal it is difficult: the size is from large blocks to coal dust, and different brands of coal also weigh differently. The weight of coal of the same brand and size class, but from different coal fields, can also vary significantly.
In the Russian Federation, the following classification of coal is used. Since we are considering bulk density here, I will not give the combustion temperature and other useful characteristics, I will give only the name of the grades and the classification by the size of the pieces.
Coal grades:
Brown (B), Long-flame (D), Gas (G), Fat (L), Gas fat (GZh), Coke (K), Coke fat (KZh), Coke second (K2), Slightly caking (SS), Lean ( T), Skinny-sintering (OS), Anthracite (A).
Classification by piece size:
- More than 100 mm - P (plate),
- 50-100 mm - K (large),
- 25-50 mm - O (walnut),
- 13-25 mm - M (small),
- 6-13 mm - C (seed),
- 0-6 mm - W (piece).
Without classes: P (ordinary), 0-300 mm - career, 0-200 mm - mine.
The name of the coal is written as follows: in the first place is the brand, in the second is the size.
Most often, classes mixed in size come across, for example, DKOM (long-flame, large + walnut + small, i.e. from 13 to 100 mm).
The data that I will give is rather average - so as to have an idea, in general, since at the moment coal is sold in most cases by weight, not volume.
| Grade of coal | Specific gravity 1 cu. m
(Weight of 1 cubic meter of material, assuming that it is a monolithic piece with a volume of 1 cubic meter) |
Bulk weight of some popular types (by size) of coal |
| Brown (B) | 1250-1500 kg/cu.m. m | BKO 680-720 kg/cu. m |
| Long Flame (D) | 1280-1350 kg/cu.m. m | WPC about 800 kg/cu. m, DKOM about 700 kg / cu. m |
| Bold (W) | 1250-1300 kg/cu.m. m | GZhO about 800 kg/cu. m |
| Gas (G) | 1280-1330 kg/cu.m. m | GZhO about 800 kg/cu. m |
| Skinny (T) | 1310-1390 kg/cu.m. m | TR 1250-1300 kg/cu. m |
| Anthracite (A) | 1000-1150 kg/cu.m. m | AC about 800 kg/cu.m. m |
You can also check the bulk density that you learned from the seller by analogy with sand, but it is better to take a larger container to reduce the error. The error of the results will be noticeably greater than that of bulk materials. To determine the density of coal, there is a whole GOST (54246-2010), but it is used for industrial volumes of coal.
watch out for the car
The virtual journey through the mines clearly demonstrated that the developers of specialized solutions are moving in the right direction.
Andrey Petrov mentioned an urgent problem - the interaction of people with equipment in a mine or a quarry.And manufacturers are releasing systems that help minimize their collision.
Let's consider the operation of such equipment on the example of a system created by the RTL Service Group of Companies, on whose initiative this conference was held.
How does all this work to prevent collisions with mining equipment and personnel?
The system is arranged as follows. Sensors are installed on the machine, and a display is installed in the operator's cab. On overalls or on a helmet of a miner - a warning system: vibration and light.
The space around the transport is divided into zones: in green, a person is safe, yellow is a reason to be wary, and red is a clear danger.
These zones are adjusted to the requirements of specific equipment and the equipment used. If a person enters the danger zone, a signal is sent to both the operator of the equipment and the miner.
There is also an option when the car automatically stops in this case - Andrey Petrov also mentioned this decision.
A similar system can be configured for technician-technician interaction. The function of looking around the corner is also possible: this allows the driver to know in advance that there is a miner or equipment around the corner, increase vigilance and reduce speed.
Europe
By April of this year, one ton of thermal coal in the EU countries cost $50 (-40%). Experts explain the sharp drop in prices by an increase in the volume of stocks of “black” fuel.
By the end of the 1st quarter, there were 6.8 million tons of thermal coal in storage in Europe, although at the end of 2018 it was 6.5 million tons. Thus, Europe now has the largest amount of thermal coal reserves since 2013.
In addition, the price decreased due to the climatic factor - the winter in European countries was warm this year. A significant reduction in the consumption of this type of fuel towards renewable energy also played a significant role.
For 6 months of 2019, electricity generation by coal-fired power plants decreased by 19%. Correspondingly, the indicators of coal production also decreased: the largest drop in the first six months was observed in Ireland (79%) and Germany (22%).
You can read more about how this will affect the Russian coal industry here.
How to calculate the amount of coal for the winter
The amount of coal needed to heat a house depends on many parameters:
- from the heated area and from the material from which the house is built;
- on how it is insulated and what windows are, how tightly the doors are fitted;
- on the type of heating and type of boiler, type of coal;
- on the severity of winters in your area and their average duration, etc.
All these "little things" are very important. So most of the coal will be needed for heating a brick house - 30-35% more than for a wooden similar area or a house made of aerated concrete blocks. For heating a well-insulated cinder-block house (wall thickness 45 cm) with an area of 90 m 2, the owners spend 2.5-3.5 tons of coal (1 ton of anthracite "walnut" and two "seeds"). Heating stove. For others, a house of the same area, but without insulation, takes about 6-7 tons.
How much coal do you need for the winter? It depends on the area of the house, what it is built from, how it is insulated, on the type of boiler, and on many other factors.
Owners of 2-3 room apartments in the same region buy 1.5-2 tons to feed solid fuel boilers. In another region, for heating a wooden house 80 m 2 from a bar, 5 tons of coal and firewood are bought, but their winters are harsh - up to -40 ° C for a month and a half and the rest of the time -20 ° C.
To determine how long tons of coal will last for you, it is recommended to buy several bags of the selected brand (and in the place where you plan to buy) and see how much it is required per day to maintain a comfortable temperature. Take into account the "outboard" temperature and compare it with the average during the winter. Draw conclusions from the results. If you are drowning for the first year, try to take it with some margin.If it remains, it doesn’t matter, it does not lose its properties (unless you bought brown coal), but if it’s not enough, it’s already unpleasant.
Raspadskaya's experience
Raspadskaya Coal Company (part of EVRAZ) worked in 2016 without a single accident, but in 2017 it got into the top news with information about a fire at the mouth of a degassing unit.
Fortunately, the miners made it to the surface unharmed - there were no casualties.
However, there is also a reputation issue.
Today, the enterprise is ready to inform the public about measures to improve the level of safety and even invites them to visit production facilities. Alexander Petrov, Deputy Director for Labor Protection, Industrial Safety and Ecology of Raspadskaya Coal Company LLC, said that this year the company intends to spend about 5 billion rubles for these purposes.
Raspadskaya Coal Company registers about 130 employee injuries a year - it's hard to say whether this is a lot or a little.
As for fatal cases, one did take place last year, however, the company notes a decrease in unpleasant indicators.
Kemerovo region
One of the cuts of the SDS-Ugol company
Coal reserves in the region: 635 billion tons (total reserves).
Key companies: Kuzbassrazrezugol, Yuzhny Kuzbass,
SUEK-Kuzbass, SDS-Coal, Raspadskaya, Northern Kuzbass,
Yuzhkuzbassugol.
Produced in 2018: 255.3 mmt
The Kemerovo region is the largest coal mining region in Russia, it is here that 58% of the “black” fuel in the country is obtained, and about 66% of the coal is mined in an open way.
On the lands of Kuzbass is the Kuznetsk coal basin - the richest coal deposit in the world.
Of the total reserves, 140 billion tons of coal are suitable for open-pit mining. Among the large coal mines are Taldinsky, Mokhovsky, Bachatsky, Berezovsky.
Kuzbass produces 56% of hard coal (reserves amount to 52.5 billion tons) and about 80% of valuable coking grades.
Coal produced in the Kuznetsk basin is exported to 63 countries. The main importers are the Netherlands, Turkey, as well as Japan and South Korea, which are currently the largest consumers of Russian coal.
In general, Russia has big plans for the countries of the Asia-Pacific region. Read more in our material on the prospects of the coal industry.
Sakhalin region
"Coal Seaport Shakhtersk"
Coal reserves in the region: 47.8 billion tons (resources).
Key companies: Eastern Mining Company, Sakhalinugol, Uglegorskugol.
Produced in 2018: 10.8 million tons
In the Sakhalin Region, coal deposits are located directly on Sakhalin Island. 35% of all coal resources of our country are concentrated in the region, in particular, about 10% of the balance reserves.
About 55.5% is the share of brown coal, for coking grades this figure is 4.4%. 194 million tons of black and brown coals are suitable for open mining.
There are 4 main coal-bearing regions in the region -
Uglegorsky, Central, Southern and Aleksandrovsky. Most of the coal is
at the Solntsevskoye, Lopatinskoye, Uglegorskoye, Boshnyakovskoye deposits.
Sakhalin fields have a more advantageous location due to their proximity
to the Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan - the presence of a number of ports greatly simplifies transportation
coal.
Who owns the information
VIST Group specialists propose to go one step further and introduce a system that will allow you to fully control the work of the mine and the miners in it.
The described collision avoidance technologies can become an element of the overall system.
What could be the solution here?
The developers propose not to single out security as a separate area at all, but to consider it as one of the elements of the enterprise management system - a sequence of shift tasks.
This is exactly what the SUEK specialist was talking about, at whose mines the achievements of VIST Group just work.
We are talking about a software product that combines many blocks of information: what state is the object in at the moment, what planned tasks should be completed, which ones are actually completed, what people are doing this, what are their qualifications, and so on.
It all looks like this.
At the beginning of the shift, the employee receives an outfit. It is imperative to check whether he went there in principle, whether he followed the route, whether he entered the danger zone correctly and left it.
The system integrates the process of fixing deviations, various documentation necessary for working here and now. With this approach, the production process is perceived as a single one; it does not break into shifts or days.
Technological maps of all cycles can be brought to the master in a mobile device.
The introduction of this kind of system allowed SUEK - according to the company itself - to reduce the number of repeated violations by 40%.
If we assume that each of them theoretically could cause an accident, then we can talk about significant achievements.
Text: Anna Kuchumova
The article was published in the Mining industry magazine No. 3, 2018
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