Average production from longwall mines in Australia rose dramatically during the early 90’s but plateaued during the past five years. This project investigates long term strategies that will bring the industry from the 5MTPA plateau to a 15MTPA level in a 15 year timeframe.

Specifically, the project will deliver:

• a benchmark on current practices and systems gaps for high capacity underground coal mining (15MTPA)
• a report on strategic research directions to support future high capacity mining
• the identification of specific, high impact research projects to facilitate future high capacity mining
• the identification of opportunities for postgraduate training in areas relevant to high capacity coal mining.

In addition to these specific outcomes, an added benefit of the scoping study is that by identifying the required step change systems to achieve high capacity underground coal mining, the study should also be able to help identify means of achieving incremental increases in production in the current seam geometries and conditions.

Contact Information
Isles Road, Indooroopilly, Qld Australia 4068
Phone:+61 7 3365 5888
Fax:    +61 7 3365 5999
Email: jkmrc@uq.edu.au