Taiyuan Heavy Industry Group’s high-end intelligent coal mining machine technology has received authoritative recognition, demonstrating China’s strength in mining equipment.

Recently, Taiyuan Heavy Machinery Group’s project, “Key Technologies and Applications of High-End Intelligent Coal Mining Machines for Complex Coal Seams,” successfully won the first prize of the 2024 Shanxi Provincial Science and Technology Award. This highest honor in Shanxi Province signifies authoritative recognition of Taiyuan Heavy Machinery Group’s technological breakthroughs in the field of intelligent coal seam mining equipment, injecting strong momentum into the iterative upgrading of high-end mining equipment in my country. Coal is a crucial cornerstone of my country’s energy system, with over 80% of its production relying on underground fully mechanized mining faces. As mining extends to greater depths, coal seams with uneven thickness, variable coal and rock properties, and complex geological structures such as faults and collapse columns have become the core “battlefield” for mining. As the core cutting equipment in fully mechanized mining faces, coal mining machines must achieve reliable, precise, and autonomous continuous operation in harsh environments characterized by high intensity, high impact, and high dust. This poses extreme challenges to the equipment’s resilience, perception capabilities, and intelligence level. Taiyuan Heavy Machinery Group (Taiyuan Heavy Machinery) directly addresses industry pain points, focusing on the three goals of “reliability, safety, and autonomy.” It has made breakthroughs in a series of core technologies, including structural design, scene perception, and adaptive control, successfully constructing a complete intelligent mining technology system for complex coal seams. The overall technology has reached the international advanced level, providing core support for national energy extraction. Building a “steel skeleton” makes the equipment more reliable. Taiyuan Heavy Machinery’s R&D team pioneered a frame-type body structure, which acts like a sturdy “skeleton” for the coal mining machine, greatly enhancing its impact resistance. Compared with similar models, this structure increases the overall modularity rate by 20%, fundamentally improving the convenience and reliability of underground maintenance. Simultaneously, through intelligent lubrication and efficient heat dissipation technology, the thermal balance temperature of the transmission system is reduced by 10%-15% compared to similar models, ensuring stable operation under long-term heavy loads and significantly reducing equipment failure rates. **Improving Equipment Safety with “Sensitive Senses”:** “The underground environment is dark and dusty. For a coal mining machine to ‘see’ the coal seam and ‘avoid’ personnel, it needs a high-precision sensing system. Through array-type inertial sensing components and ultra-wideband fusion technology, we’ve equipped the coal mining machine with ‘360-degree eyes’ and sensitive nerves,’ enabling continuous and accurate positioning in the dim underground. Simultaneously, its lidar and infrared imaging technology ensures that the accuracy of coal and rock characteristic identification remains stable at over 90%. There’s also an intelligent early warning system for personnel and equipment, building a digital safety barrier for the work area,” the project leader explained. **Improving Equipment with a “Smart Brain”:** Injecting a “Smart Brain” for Greater Autonomy. Taiyuan Heavy Machinery Group (Taiyuan Heavy Machinery) constructed and updated a three-dimensional underground geological model in real time, establishing an intelligent cutting planning system that integrates data such as coal seam geological characteristics and recovery rate. This allows the coal mining machine to “sense” changes in the coal seam, increasing the coal seam recovery rate by 8%. Furthermore, the Taiyuan Heavy Machinery R&D team innovatively developed a “one-click configuration” technology for traction variable frequency speed control system parameters, achieving adaptive adjustment of traction speed and cutting height, truly achieving “one-click start and autonomous operation,” increasing the coal mining machine’s operating efficiency by 5%. Based on this series of integrated innovations from theory to practice, this technology not only constitutes the core competitiveness of high-end intelligent coal mining machine products but also solidifies into a robust independent intellectual property system. To date, the project has obtained 24 authorized invention patents at home and abroad, registered 7 software copyrights, led or participated in the formulation of 4 national standards, and published 24 high-level academic papers in core journals at home and abroad, laying a solid foundation for the continuous iteration of the technology and its industry promotion and application. These technological achievements have now been implemented in numerous large-scale underground coal mines across China. Taiyuan Heavy Machinery Group (Taiyuan Heavy Industry) has become the only domestic manufacturer of coal mining machines selected for CCTV’s documentary series “Super Equipment,” showcasing China’s core strength in high-end mining equipment to the world.