Future of Oil Shale Mining Technology in Estonia

Abstract

In the future, oil shale mining conditions will worsen and environmental taxes will be increased. Higher calorific value and more homogeneous material are required for more effective usage of boilers and generator units in power stations and oil plants. The solution for the mining industry is related to the optimal usage of mineral and technological resources, utilizing the best available techniques and modelling and visualization of mining impacts for explaining the changes in technology to the influenced parties. The main challenges for technologies in the future are related to the mining in environmentally or socially sensitive areas. One of the solutions could be utilizing selective mining and backfilling. Related tests have shown good results and show a promising future for sustainable oil shale mining.

Technologies for Decreasing Mining Losses

“…In many cases fragmented overburden placement and usage of overburden bridges could also give positive results for decreasing mining losses [39,12]. In case of smooth stripping technology, influence to the landscape could also be decreased [29,28].…”

“…The main hypotheses are that backfilling reduces mining losses and the amount of waste on the ground surface [27]. In addition it increases land stability [12]. Stability issues have been developed in sense of information availability.…”

“…Currently the power of the machines has increased and pick properties allow cutting harder rock. It is proposed, that both longitudinal or transverse head continuous miners (roadheaders) could be used for cutting oil shale [12]. The selectivity option is directly related to the waste material handling and should be tested in the mine [11].…”

“…Tests have been performed with different oil shale and limestone layers. Surface miners are considered as BAT (Best Available Technology) for surface oil shale mining extraction [12,42,18,15,5]. c) Cutting with longwall miners The planning and testing has been done for longwall mining possibilities.…”

Pilot Unit for Mining Waste Reduction Methods

“…It is possible to save up from the transportation of extracted mineral if the primary enrichment is done near the mining face. Introduction of the backfilling technology helps to reduce ground stability issues [12,16,23] and allows us to extract oil shale with smaller loss. It is necessary to proceed with the study in order to find optimal solutions of how and where to use crushing buckets.…”