In India, despite its natural abundance, demand for coal exceeds its countrywide supply due to failure to achieve high production targets, especially in opencast mines, which are responsible for 94.98 percent of total raw coal production in the country. Employment of technological solutions, such as surface miners, is key to achieving higher coal production and productivity in an environmentally friendly manner, especially in populated areas adjacent to the mining zone. This technology eliminates blast hole drilling, blasting and primary crushing units, thus reducing related environmental hazards like ground vibration and fly rocks. In this work, the correlations between coal production and key productivity indicators — namely, machine shift-time, pick consumption and diesel consumption — of surface miners in different geological-mining conditions are discussed. Relationships between the indicators and coal production were evaluated through bivariate regression analyses along with their coefficients of determination. The indicators follow polynomial relationships with coal production on a daily and a monthly basis, with Pearson correlation coefficient, r, values from 0.774 to 0.907 and coefficients of determination, r2, from 0.664 to 0.909 in opencast coal mines.
Full-text paper:
Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration (2023) 40:389–402, https://doi.org/10.1007/s42461-023-00734-0
