Status and prospects of underground coal mining technology in Vietnam

Abstract

Underground coal mining in Vietnam plays an important role to
not only the sustainable coal industry but also the energy and social security
in this country. Although the Vietnam coal industry has produced 35–45
million tonnes of raw coal per annum in past ten years, a great volume of
coal resources remains distributed in complex geo-mining conditions and
mostly unmined. This paper presents a brief review of the current and
potential technologies for cutting coal and controlling roof in Vietnam
underground coal mines. From the review, it is concluded that there is an
urgent demand on improvement of current technologies as well as on
investigation for effective application of more advanced mining methods
into the industry, especially for deep mining at Red River Delta—the largest
coal basin in Vietnam.