NEW DELHI: With the use of modern technology of ‘overburden removal,’ two of the world’s five largest coal mines are in India’s Chhattisgarh state, according to the Indian Ministry of Coal.
Overburden removal is a new process for removing layers of soil, stone and similar material to expose the coal seam underground.
‘These two mines in Chhattisgarh use some of the world’s largest and heaviest earth moving machinery such as 240-ton dumpers, 42-cubic-metre shovels along with vertical rippers for environment-friendly overburden removal,’ the Ministry said in a press release.
They eliminate the need for noisy, dangerous and ecology-unfriendly blasts to prepare the ground for mining. Surface mining machines at the Gevra and Kusmunda opencast mines can extract and cut coal without blasting, the Ministry said.
India’s ranking of the second and fourth spots for these mines among the world’s five largest coal mines has been recorded in WorldAtlas.com, according to the press release.
Together these two mines have
the capacity to produce 100 million tons of coal annually. The mines are owned by the government-run South Eastern Coalfields Limited.
Source: Emirates News Agency
