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36 www.coalage.com May 2017 plow mining continued treat mining system. The entries at Pinna- cle have a height of 79 in. to 85 in. General- ly, all entries are anchored. In 1989, the Pinnacle mine became the world's first automated longwall without an operator at the face. Westfalia Luenen (a Cat predecessor) supplied a plow system to US Steel No. 50 mine in 1989 for an 820-ft-long face. The system had installed plow power of 2 x 362 hp. The plow guide was a 9-34 ve with 30-mm x 126-mm plow chain, and the plow speed was 303.1 ft per minute (fpm). In 1999, a large system was supplied to the Pinnacle mine by Deutsche Bergbau Technik (DBT, another Cat predecessor). The face length was 1,047 ft, and the sys- tem had an installed plow power 2 x 536 hp with an HK 30-2 plow box. The plow guide was a 9-38 ve with a 38-mm x 137-mm plow chain and a plow speed of 390 fpm. It also had a Type 2.7 - triple body. In 10 years, the face length had grown more than 200 ft and the installed power had increased by nearly 50%. The plows at the Pinnacle mine work with large cutting depths, as much as 10 in. Such a large web results in a signifi- cant increase in cut product to be loaded. Earlier experience showed that a single plow body had difficulties to load such an amount of coal. For that reason, a new tri- ple plow body with inside bottom bits has been developed and manufactured, allow- ing loading of extracted coal at two differ- ent points simultaneously. In the last decade, the plow systems at the Pinnacle mine have reached produc- tion capacities of up to 1,550 tph With a daily plow run time of 14 to 16 hours (typ- ically), a daily production of more than 15,500 tons per day (tpd) to 18,800 tpd of clean coal was accomplished. The peak production achieved in that face amounts to 25,000 mtpd of clean coal. After 10 years of very intense mining activities, the Pin- nacle mine decided to purchase a new longwall system for the Pocahontas seam. To select the most technically reliable and efficient working system and equipment that ensures the lowest production costs, a comprehensive study of available technol- ogies has been carried out. Pinnacle's newest plow system, the GH1600, was assembled and extensively tested during July 2010 in Houston, Pennsyl- vania. A 164-ft-long plow system, complete with shields, energy supply and control units, was set up, tuned and screened during a couple of weeks. Such action was neces- sary, as this system incorporated several new technical solutions for the first time. The GH 1600-3 plow body for the new Pinnacle plow face has similar configura- tions to the previous one. The plow body consists of two external parts and one in- termediate part, where the pulling chain is attached to the plow body over the pull- ing sledge. The plow body is designed to deal with high loading requirement, which would be difficult to load on the AFC with a single body. The bottom bits are placed near to the lateral axis to improve the behavior of the plow body while crossing undulations. The Pinnacle plow system is operated from a special control room placed in an operator car, located in the powertrain in the main drive entry. All necessary com- puters, control and communication units, screens and other devices are located in- side the operator car. The plow system commenced its ser- vice at the Pinnacle mine at the end of 2010 in a relatively short panel. After the move to a new panel, the plow system started again in spring 2011. The main drive entry has a width of 23 ft and is almost 7 ft high. The tail drive entry has the height of 6 ft, but it is 5 ft nar- rower, i.e., its width is 18 ft. As both entries have special entry shields with longer can- opies to keep the roof above the drives sta- ble, the drives have a relatively low height of 63 in. The Pinnacle coal mine currently holds the world record for production from plow systems in low seams of 35,724 tons, mined within 24 hours on April 11, 2014. Bogdanka Mine in Poland Lubelski W giel Bogdanka S.A. is one of the leading producers of hard coal in Poland. The company achieved its leading position in this sector as a result of comprehensive financial operations as well as hard work on constant efficiency improvement of its mining activities over the last 30 years. The Figure 6—Plow body GH 1600-3 from the Pinnacle mine. Figure 7—Plow control room at Stefanów plant. Figure 5—Cross frame main drive at the Pinnacle mine.