I always get excited visiting another deep coal mine. All coal mines are different, but still they all look almost the same. Well, my recent visit to Pine Ridge Coal Mine in west Virginia was an wonderful experience. Pine Ridge Coal mine is truly the best maintained deep mine I have been so far. The best part is their safety training. We spent more than an hour going over numerous safety issues, escape ways, how to use self rescuers, where to find rescuers in case of an accident and so on. They also have a very nice video that tells you all about the mine, their operations, preparation plant and more. Thick and nice Coalburg seam is good and flat with some minor undulations in the mine. In most of the places I have not noticed any wet floor problem. Only in the south section they have some wet and muddy floor. The mine is nicely covered with white rock dust. You will not feel like entering a dark, black coal mine at all. Also, I must say, this mine is the most well maintained and clean of all mines I have visited so far. Another great thing about the mine is that we have good mining height. I never had to bend down and crawl! Below are some of pictures of the mine, I put the link to the complete gallery above. Have a look and enjoy.

The Man Trips are entirely fancy and bigger than usual man-trips. It was the fastest among all man trips I have ever been inside a mine!

Fancy Man trip – with self rescuers.

This is one of the underground power station. Notice thick power cables and always be careful about them while you are underground.

Notice how the power cables are connected to various sections of the deep coal mine.

Rock Dust covering Coal inside Underground Coal Mine.

Always make sure that you know where to find self rescuers while visiting underground mine.

Shuttle Car – a type of Coal Haulage Machinary stull used in deep coal mines.

Underground coal mine loader – must be a very new one!

Wet floor condition inside deep coal mine.

1. TRC Mine in Kentucky – conventional coal mine
2. Lexie Mine – conventional coal mine
3. Clas4 Mine – Continuous miner equipped (minimum mining height 52 inches).

This picture is taken at the same mine but represents an old portal now sealed and possibly used for air circulation.

Here is one picture of old portal at Lexie conventional coal mine.

This picture was taken at the Clas4 mine, KY. You can see the portals – old and current as well as the roof and floor strata. I love this picture as it shows a shale strata right above the coal seam up to a rider coal seam (possibly Upper Elkhorn-3 Rider) and then you have beautiful light brown hard sandstone.

This is just another picture to show you the great looking sandstone and the rider seam closely. Things I learned:

1. All 3 of the mines are “drift” mine ( Overburden thickness is too much for surface mine, but not too deep that will require a shaft).
2. There are still some conventional mines present in United States where we have “ZERO” out of seam dilution (as they do not mine any roof or floor)!
3. Expect very low mining heights in conventional coal mines. In our case mining height = coal seam thickness.
4. Remember to take your KNEE PAD!! You will have to crawl …so, don’t forget your knee protection.
5. For the Clas4 mine, the minimum mining height was 52 inches (what a relief) as they use continuous miner.

Bonus: A small video clip of stockpile generation at TRC Mine, KY

Stockpile Generation at TRC Mine, KY – These bloopers are hilarious

Just few days back I had a trip to an underground mine in West Virginia. They were mining Pocahontas 3 coal seam. P-3 seam is quite thick in that area and it is a good quality coal too. However they have serious problem with poor roof rock conditions. Many reasons control the stability of roof strata of a coal seam. Drilling and detailed geologic and geotech logging usually performed along with fracture logging to evaluate the stability of both roof and fllor rock within the permit area. Usually multiple drill holes are used for the analysis. Even after that, we can atill have local poor rock conditions due to local faults, folds, change in lithology and so on. Typically in this mine, they had differencial pressure difference betweeh soft shale unit and heavier sandy unit above. The differential compaction produced numerous slikensides in the roof strata making it very unstable roof rock. Along with that, a think rider seam is continueously present slightly above the P-3 coal seam too. Here are some pictures taken in the mine. Feel how it is underground!

Bolts Holding the Roof Rock of a coal Mine.

Under Ground Coal Mine in Operation

Folds at the immediate roof of coal seam. A very rare occurrence. Usually the coal seams are tend to be flat with local low angle folds and faults.

Nice Fossils at the Roof Rock of an Underground Coal Mine

Fossils at the roof an underground coal mine

Ring of coal spar at the immediate roof causing rock fall

Massive Hard sandstone roof – that is what every body wants. Solid and nice.

Sandstone with sharp contact with coal seam – this is what we want! But if you are interpreting coal seam from E-log, you may have some trouble. I will discuss in future in case you need to know.

Slikensided Shaley Roof immediately above a coal seam – This is one example of poor roof. More slikensides you have, poor the roof is with more chances of rockfall.

Slikensided shaley roof supported by roof bolts and wires. – sometime we also cement the roof to avoid rockfall.

Thick, Clean, Soft Pocahontas 3 Coal Seam – check out the nice looking thick Pocahontas 3 coal seam. No pyritic material visible on eye. Great looking coal seam with nice banding.

General look of an Underground Coal Mine – Look how it is at underground!