Digital twins make the entire mining process "transparent"

At present, emphasis is placed on the automation of mine production process

"There are more than 4,200 coal mines in China, of which about 3,500 are in production. Since the full implementation of coal mine intelligence in 2018, more than 680 primary intelligent mining faces have been built, including more than 430 coal mining faces and more than 250 driving faces, and 1,000 intelligent mining faces are expected to be built by 2022." For example, by the end of 2020, the country has built 901 safe and efficient coal mines, its coal output and total profits accounted for 56% and 78% of the whole industry, the degree of mechanization of coal mining reached 99.9%, and there are 285 intelligent coal mining faces. "These mines have a mortality rate of about 0.0015 million tons, well below the international advanced level of 0.02, with 898 mines having zero deaths." Practice has proved that through intelligent transformation, coal mines can achieve a high degree of safety and high efficiency."

In Ge Shirong's view, "intelligent" is based on data-driven mining equipment automation, production data visualization, mining process transparency, mining site unmanned, mining environment low loss, can achieve a safe and efficient, unmanned self-cooperative mining system. "It is necessary to achieve the independent operation of shearer, boring machine and other equipment, but also to achieve the parallel cooperation of machine groups at the working surface and the digital twin of the system." From focusing on individual intelligence to group intelligence based on the Internet and big data, this is one of the transformation characteristics of intelligent coal mines."

According to the above standards, how is the progress of coal mine intelligence? Ge Shirong admitted that in the primary intelligent mine, the construction focus is mainly on the automation of the mine production process. "Highly autonomous, information-based smart mines are the future goal, and the current smart coal mine still lacks the digital integration of the whole system." Mining IT technologies such as edge computing and delay network, mining OT technologies related to operations, and mining iot MIOT technologies such as intelligent security monitoring and coal mine robots are all doing their own things, and intelligent systematization is still a short board."

In turn, "independence" also affects the overall effect of intelligence. For example, the independent operation of the equipment unit causes insufficient data collection, poor information sharing, difficult data interaction, unable to build digital threads, and difficult to achieve efficient collaborative control of the mine. "It is necessary to realize real-time monitoring of coal mining status, and adopt bionic sensing technology to make the intelligent mining face have brain-like perception capabilities such as vision, hearing, smell, touch and kinesthesia." Ge Shirong said.

Mine Internet of Things is the main framework of intelligence

To make up for the shortcomings, we cannot do without the support of new infrastructure projects. "Big data is knowledge, artificial intelligence is the brain, the industrial Internet is the bone, 5G is the communication nerve, and mining robots are the arms." According to this, Ge Shirong proposed four upgrade paths. The first is the process upgrade, with data driven, software defined, platform support, intelligent management and other elements, to transform the mining production process; The second is equipment upgrading, based on artificial intelligence and deep learning, so that the mining equipment has the ability to operate autonomously and achieve unmanned operation; Third, function upgrading, embedding digital functions in the mining industry, so that the mining cloud process continues to be connected and interactive, and improve production efficiency; Fourth, integration and upgrading, relying on big data management, data, examples, algorithms as the core, to establish cross-business intelligent operation conditions.

"Coal mine intelligence is based on digitalization, the use of Internet of Things technology and sensory control technology to strengthen big data services to improve the controllability of the production process, reduce mining manual participation, and optimize production scheduling." Ge Shirong makes this analogy: the measurement dimension of human wisdom includes observation, memory, learning, thinking and action, etc. The corresponding "coal mine wisdom dimension" should include the ability of information collection, information storage, data mining, data application and automatic control. "Intelligence is a decision-making system composed of 'data + algorithm + computing power', which uncovers the huge energy contained in data and provides production tools, allocates resources and creates value in human and machine activities."

Ge Shirong introduced that the data structure of intelligent coal mine comes from service data, production data, equipment data, management data, etc., which is combined to become big data. "Mine Internet of Things is the main skeleton, but also to obtain a higher degree of mining automation basic conditions, covering the mine production process control data acquisition, processing, exchange and analysis of the network system." The information physical system is the key platform, and the construction of a system-level closed-loop enabling system based on data flow state perception, real-time analysis, scientific decision-making, and accurate execution can improve the efficiency of resource allocation and realize resource collaborative optimization. At present, the importance of data acquisition is not enough, there is a lack of conversion of collected data into useful information, intelligent processing of mining data feedback is still blank, and the self-perception, self-prediction and self-coordination capabilities of mining are in their infancy."

The digital twin face is used to simulate actual coal mining

What kind of working surface can achieve the ideal effect? Ge Shirong proposed the use of digital twins to build a new intelligent platform.

"Digital twin intelligent mining face is a highly realistic 3D image scene of coal mining face with data visualization, human-computer interaction and process self-optimization, including physical working face, digital working face and data information interaction." Ge Shilong emphasized that the digital twin is to create a virtual model of a physical entity in a digital way, and provide more real-time, efficient and intelligent operation or operation services for physical entities through virtual and real interactive feedback, data fusion analysis, decision iterative optimization and other means. In other words, it is not a traditional simulation model, but a dynamic feedback digital working face mirror body. Based on the perception data of equipment operation, the digital mapped intelligent working face is used to realistically simulate the actual coal mining conditions.

Ge Shirong said that based on the digital twin of equipment and working face, the realization of transparent mining production, operation and service can be divided into four steps: First, the connection and visibility of the discrete digital twin. "Discrete" is to do it one by one, to achieve data connection and digital visibility of single resources such as equipment and personnel, such as a shearer and a boring machine, and to take the lead in realizing the diagnosis, descriptive analysis and prediction of digital equipment, processes and systems. At present, the intelligent development of coal mines is mostly in this stage.

"The second is to achieve composite digital twin interconnection and data-driven. A coal mining or driving face, a main coal flow transport line, based on the internal discrete digital twin and external digital resources composite digital twin, which is the main direction of intelligent construction efforts. The next step is to face the whole process of mining, through the data twin monitoring and driven business operation, forming a sustainable automatic collection, automatic analysis, autonomous execution, autonomous decision-making data-driven closed loop. Finally, to realize the symbiosis of ecological services and value of digital twins, in addition to a single mine, it also includes coal preparation plants, transmission and distribution systems, and even users, which is to collect the upstream and downstream digital twin organizations of the industry, and become an industrial digital twin with the chain master as the core." Ge Shirong said that digital twin technology will promote intelligent mining into a new era, achieve the integration and integration of all elements, all processes, and all data, and achieve the purpose of optimal configuration of mine production system, independent collaboration of equipment, and safe and efficient mining.