Coal Age

AUG 2012

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1950-1959 ment enables section crews to mine up to 1,500 tons per shift from the 10 to 18 ft Tiller seam. Production target for end of the year is 22,000 tons of clean coal per day." Planned to be the world's largest mine able to produce up to 5 million tons per year, the new operation was designed from the beginning to take advantage of automation and continuous mining technologies. Management deployed Joy 10-RU cutters and 15-SC shuttle cars for section haulage. "Thus the main problem was to get a rugged high-capacity fast-tramming load- er. Joy undertook the job of building a load- er to Clinchfield's specifications and came up with the 15-BU." *Coal Age, December 1957 for progress over that decade was set in western Kentucky. In 1942, tons per man averaged 6.51 per shift. By 1951, that num- ber had increased to 14.24 tons per man per shift—a 118.8% gain. Huge new surface mines would increase that number throughout the end of the decade. But underground, in the January 1954 issue, Coal Age reported that in the new Consol Hendrix mine in eastern Kentucky, crews were able to achieve 47 tons per man shift in 42-in coal with the help of new Model CM33 Lee-Norse Junior Miner mounted on the chassis of a Joy 14-BU loader. Throughout the rest of the early 1950s, many features treated and tracked those developments. In the October 1953 issue, associate editor A.E. Flowers reported on successful roof-bolting at the Mine No. 44 of the Bethlehem Mine Corp., Idamay, W.Va., where 138.42 miles of entry had been bolted with no major failures of devel- opment over a five-year period. Bethlehem adopted roof-bolting early on in 1948 when they purchased the mine and subsequently began rehabilitation work that included replacing timbers and other supports. Initial roof-bolting was restricted to out-by intersections. But management soon real- ized that to really harness the potential of the technique, roof bolting must be done at the face as soon as possible after the coal was extracted. Once roof-bolting was part of the mining cycle, no problems were encountered and productivity increased significantly. In the April 1954 issue, the magazine reported the Warwick No. 2 mine, owned by the Duquense Light Co., Greensboro, Pa., had mounted twin roof-bolting drills on their continuous-mining machines so they could place bolts while machines 106 www.coalage.com cut at the face. The big benefit was a material reduction in timbering delays which formally consumed up to 15% of shift time. In the April 1957 issue, the editors reported on the surge in roof bolting. The year prior, 424 bituminous operations used systematic roof bolting as a method of roof support. Of these, 159 mines used bolts as the sole method of support. In 1955, almost 3 million bolts were being used per month. Among the mines using bolts in 1956, 8% employed water to allay dust, 35% employed dry dust collectors, 10% used water with drilling in parts of their mines, and 44% employed no mean of dust control other than respirators. In the June 1957 issue, Coal Age reviewed the new Pittsburgh & Midway Coal Co.'s DeKoven mine in western Kentucky. The old company's first venture underground, "modern is the word for DeKoven—the newest giant among coal producing properties." Intent on loading high quality industrial fuel on the Ohio River, the new mine boasted "a 2.5 mi over- land belt conveyor system from mine to cleaning plant and from plant to river, a modern river-loading dock and efficient raw-and clean coal storage facilities at the cleaning plant. The DeKoven workings are in the No. 9 seam, which averages 59-60 in. thick. Coal is produced underground by four high-capacity conventional mining units operated by eight 12-man crews on a two-shift schedule." Two new Colmol units were in the process of being introduced to increase production to more than 100,000 tons per month in 1958. In the July 1959 issue, Coal Age reviewed operations at the new Clinchfield Moss No. 3 mine where "specially designed equip- 100th Anniversary Special Issue In the December 1959 issue, the maga- zine closed the decade by reporting on the new Loveridge mine of the Mountaineer Coal Co., a division of Pitt-Consol. Planned output of 15,000 clean tpd spread over three daily shifts, production comes from boring-type continuous miners supple- mented by shuttle-car, belt and mine-car haulage, plus belt hoisting. In the first room-and-pillar stages, equipment includ- ed two Joy Twin-borers, two 11BU pickup loaders, two 7-ton NMS Torkars and one Joy extensible belt for operation to a maxi- mum distance of 1,000 ft in room advance- ment. The opening of the mine, in March 1958, brought up to 12 and 10, respectively, of the number of mines and preparation plants operated by Consol in northern West Virginia. These operations accounted for 35% of Consol's overall production. Coal Preparation in the 1950s: Automation to Push-button Controls Preparation would become more important throughout the 1950s as more loading machines were introduced. High wages were leading more companies to invest in higher productivity loaders and increase mechani- cal mining methods. "The use of loading machines underground has made it more difficult to eliminate impurities, and experi- ence seems to indicate that the cheapest mechanical-loading costs can often be obtained by shooting considerable roof material, bands or partings in the seam, and even bottom material, with the coal," wrote John Griffen, consulting engineer, McNally Pittsburg Mfg. Corp. in the April 1951 issue. "These new mining methods, in addition to adding heavy refuse materials which can be removed from the coal fairly easily, often add materials with a specific gravity only slightly higher than the coal and thus pose much more difficult mechanical-cleaning prob- lems." Some of these problems were beyond August 2012

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