——Observation of the 2024 China International Mining Conference
People's Daily reporter Sun Yifei
October 19, 2024 10:27 | Source: People's Daily Online-Tianjin Channel
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At present, 173 kinds of minerals have been discovered in the mainland, and the reserves of 45 kinds of minerals rank among the top in the world, making it a veritable mining power.
How to strive to move from a mining country to a mining power with new quality productivity? The 2024 (26th) China International Mining Conference, which opened in Tianjin on October 15, is gathering the power of the industry to explore the answers.
Safer production operations
Mine safety production is related to the life safety and property safety of miners, and is also an important guarantee for the sustainable development of mining enterprises. After years of development, the mining operation mode has gradually shifted from "going down the mine in person" to "remote control", and from "passive emergency" to "active early warning".
"We have a set of mixed explosives system, the system can accurately calculate the amount of explosives, realize the high degree of adaptation of on-site mixed explosives and mine lithology, and many operation scenarios are equipped with unmanned aerial systems and unmanned systems to ensure safety." According to Diar, a staff member of the booth of Hongda Blasting Engineering Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Hongda Blasting"), the company's current mixed explosives business covers many provinces, covering large and medium-sized mines, national key infrastructure projects, etc., with an on-site mixed explosives production capacity of 331,000 tons/year.
Visitors learn about the mixed explosives business at the grand blasting site. Photo by People's Daily reporter Sun Yifei
A few months ago, the State Mine Safety Supervision Bureau issued the "Notice of the State Mine Safety Supervision Bureau on Approving the Construction of the Second Batch of Key Laboratories", and the "Non-coal Open-pit Mine Safety Intelligent Mining Laboratory" led by Hongda Blasting was listed among them, and the laboratory will focus on overcoming the key scientific problems and "stuck neck" engineering problems in the intelligent construction of the whole process of non-coal open-pit mining.
At the special forum of this conference, the participating companies showed their skills around the issue of "safe production": Liu Dajin, deputy captain of the 517th Brigade of China Exploration Bureau, shared a new technology to solve the problem of water hazards in deep mine mining, which can effectively prevent groundwater from entering the mine, so as to ensure the safe and efficient mining of minerals; Wang Shiran, director of the market management department of XCMG Xuzhou XCMG Mining Machinery Co., Ltd., introduced their intelligent mining equipment, and the group is striving to make mining operations safer by promoting intelligent and environmentally friendly equipment.
"The core of many new technologies and new equipment exhibited at this conference is to make mining safer and safety guaranteed, so that we can talk about other things." A visitor from Beijing said.
The management and control system is smarter
The smart control center, which started construction in May 2023, has now become the "strongest brain" of Western Mining Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Western Mining") for smart operation, smart management and emergency dispatch.
"This center empowers the development of the company from three aspects: operation, production scheduling and emergency command, transforming the operation mode from 'planning scheduling' to 'real-time scheduling', and the management means are also moving from 'online' to 'intelligent'." The introduction of Zhu Ziyu, a staff member of the Western Mining booth, attracted many visitors.
In the Western Mining Video Integration Platform, the production operation situation is unobstructed. Photo by People's Daily reporter Sun Yifei
Not long ago, China's first 5,000-meter high-altitude open-pit mine autonomous driving stripping project was officially launched in Tibet Yulong Copper Mine, a subsidiary of Xikuang Group. In recent years, driven by new technologies such as 5G, big data, and artificial intelligence, digital intelligence transformation has become a key move in the mining industry. Western Mining has laid out in advance, and actively built a smart mine integrating smart mining, smart beneficiation, and smart management and control in Yulong Copper Mine, so that "fingertip" beneficiation has become a reality, and intelligent construction has promoted the mine to reduce people, increase safety, and improve efficiency.
In the view of Dong Jianxiong, deputy general manager of Aluminum Corporation of China, technology + digital, digital is the trend, and technology is the direction. "It is an inevitable trend of the development of digital and intelligent mineral resources management to integrate massive information such as geology, mining, and beneficiation of mines, and build a multi-level mineral resource data, data sharing, exchange, modeling and analysis, as well as an intelligent mineral resources management system predicted by the optimal scheme."
Mining is more environmentally friendly
The new era of mining is no longer synonymous with dusty and environmentally damaging mines.
"In the construction of production facilities, we regard wastewater management as the core issue, and recycle industrial sewage, domestic sewage, and rainwater to ensure the full use of water resources." Huang Huoliang, from the Party and Mass Department of Zijin Mining Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Zijin Mining"), said that the mine conducts real-time online monitoring of total pollutants and emission information, timely prediction and early warning, and also produces and builds while restoring.
In 2023, the water withdrawal from the Tingjiang River will be 736,000 tons, a decrease of 1.792 million tons from the same period of the previous year, and the annual water recycling rate will reach 96.72%. As of the end of August 2023, the Purple Mountain Gold and Copper Mine has implemented a total greening operation area of about 21,400 mu and planted 4.2 million flowers and trees. Through the implementation of plant measures, the damage to water and soil resources caused by the project construction has been controlled, soil erosion has been effectively controlled, forest and grass plants have been restored, soil properties have been improved, surface runoff has been reduced, and the mine has become greener.
At the Zijin Mining booth, customers inquire about gold jewelry. Photo by People's Daily reporter Sun Yifei
Chen Jinghe, chairman of Zijin Mining, believes that the allocation of resources to the world is the inevitable choice of world-class mining enterprises, and it is the responsibility of miners to build a globally competitive mining enterprise, and calls for global cooperation and common development to provide green and low-carbon mineral raw materials for the world.
In recent years, ecological restoration of mines has been carried out in various parts of China according to local conditions, and the results have been remarkable. Hunan Baoshan Nonferrous Metals Mining Co., Ltd. eliminated high-pollution production technology, promoted the construction of mechanized and intelligent production lines, actively carried out reclamation and afforestation in mining areas, and relied on the long history and culture of mining to create industrial and mining tourist attractions.
At the same time, the central government has arranged special funds to support the restoration of historical mines in key river basins such as the Yangtze River and the Yellow River, as well as key areas such as the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Fenwei Plain and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Since the 13th Five-Year Plan, China has completed the treatment of more than 4.5 million acres of abandoned mines left over from history.
(Editors: Han Yujun, Zhang Guigui)