Advances in Optimization and Modelling of Coal Mining
A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073). This special issue belongs to the section "H: Geo-Energy".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (5 May 2025) | Viewed by 2916
Special Issue Editors
Interests: computational methods of spatial modelling of ore deposits and mine planning; modelling and calculation of mining transport systems
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: applications of mathematics and computer methods in mining engineering; computer systems for maintenance management and inventory control; reliability of transport systems and their components (esp. belt conveying systems); economic analysis of their operation; NDT methods of conveyor belts condition; stochastic methods in mining and simulation models; quality assurance and quality control; investment decision making and economic evaluation; risk analysis; optimization in mine designs and production scheduling; modelling of mines and power plants cooperation in liberalized energy markets; energy risk modelling; ETS market analyzing and modelling
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Global coal production amounted to approximately 175 exajoules (1018 J) in 2022, which represents a 75% increase since the beginning of the 21st century, while global electric energy production has doubled since then. The most populous countries like China and India continue to develop fossil-fuelled power generation projects that, in contrast, are being abandoned in the EU due to rigorous climate protection policies. Looking globally, the rising scale of coal mining—one of the most energy-exhausting and environmentally aggressive branches of the economy—introduces challenges for researchers. Optimisation efforts of coal mining operations should be targeted to both improving the overall efficiency and mitigating their environmental impact. One methods for decreasing carbon emissions from fossil-fuelled power plants is the co-firing of coal and biomass; however, this creates a set of hazard and handling problems to be solved. The rapidly increasing share of unstable RESs has created the need to address the temporal and random surpluses and shortages of RESs by providing effective methods of balancing them. The coal-fuelled power generation complex contains various and not yet utilised possibilities of energy supply (not only directly from burning the coal) or storage with the use of intensive energy-consuming operations that can be controlled considering the interim needs of balancing the electric energy in the grid.
These problems encourage researchers to begin investigations with novel modelling and calculating methods applying online data acquisition, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence algorithms to build effective digital twins of coal-fuelled power complexes that can help to achieve a higher level of sustainable electric energy generation comprising renewable and fossil-fuelled sources.
The proposed topics of this Special Issue of Energies are:
- Energy policy;
- Coal assets policy;
- Energy security;
- Coal-bed methane;
- Energy audit of coal handling mine and power plant;
- Coal energy sources for present and future;
- Coal-fired energy dilemma;
- Coal combustion efficiency;
- Clean coal technology;
- Energy climate nexus;
- Geoeconomics of coal;
- Coal and biomass handling and cofiring.
Dr. Witold Kawalec
Dr. Leszek Jurdziak
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- coal mining
- energy production
- process modelling
- coal deposit modelling
- digital twin
- coal quality tracking
- coal processing
- fossil fuels
- green power
- carbon emissions
- dynamic control of energy
- surplus of RES
- black and green power management
- overburden removal control
- energy conversion and storage
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