Dong Bac Corporation under the Ministry of National Defence is an economic-defence enterprise whose main production and business lines include coal mining, processing, and trading to contribute to ensuring national energy security. In performing its tasks, besides the advantages, the Corporation has encountered multiple difficulties and challenges as the mines under the Corporation’s management and exploitation have small reserves and are scattered in complex geologies, while the coal quality and grades are low. After many years of operation, the mines are very deep with narrow field openings, high land and stone peeling coefficients, long transportation distance, and large waste dumping elevation. Moreover, the exploitation pits are under the waste dumps and old mining areas, bordering the mines of Vietnam National Coal - Mineral Industries Holding Corporation Limited, so there are many risks of insecurity, such as water collapse, methane explosion, mine fire, pit collapse, etc. In that context, over the years, the Corporation Party Committee and Directorate have led and directed the synchronous implementation of solutions to optimise the production process, improve productivity, product quality, and income for employees, and ensure safety and environmental hygiene. Particularly, innovation, application of technologies, and promotion of technical improvement initiatives into production are the breakthroughs and the most important solutions.

Firstly, to bring the solution into life, the Corporation has thoroughly grasped the resolutions, directives, and legal documents of the Party, State, and Central Military Commission, Ministry of National Defence, on science and technology to develop and promulgate regulations on management of scientific and technological activities with remuneration mechanisms, policies, and funds invested in scientific research, technology application, and promotion of initiatives and technical improvements in stages and steps of coal mining and processing. This is an important legal basis for companies and member units to be proactive and flexible in production. It has also strengthened the coordination with experts and consultancy units in researching, innovating technology lines, and applying new scientific and technical advances. At the same time, its cadres, engineers, and highly skilled workers have been encouraged to actively research, apply science and technology, and promote initiatives and technical improvements in synchronising production lines, increasing labour productivity, improving product quality, and preventing risks and accidents in an environmentally friendly manner. To achieve high efficiency, the Corporation has attached importance to building high-quality human resources and paid attention to planning, training, fostering, and arranging personnel based on their work efficiency to promote good abilities and knacks under the motto of “job-based assignment” to appoint the right people to the right jobs. Annually, the Corporation requests its subordinate agencies and units to register projects on researching and applying science and technology and technical improvement initiatives for approval and investment of funds, that are extracted from production and business profits, for implementation. Accordingly, over the years, the Corporation has researched, coordinated in researching, and successfully applied tens of scientific and technological advances and technical improvement initiatives in different fields, including mechanisation, automation, mining technology, pit reinforcement digging, ventilation, drainage, water collapse prevention, transportation, processing, improvement of machinery and equipment,... in streamlining production to bring about high economic efficiency and great social significance, improve the environment, working conditions, and safety assurance for employees, and contribute to improving production and business efficiency and well implementing the goal of “small-scaled unit, high productivity, and high pay”.

Applying the hydraulic-powered support technology in mining

As the requirements and characteristics of coal mining in each type of mine are different, the Corporation has advocated researching, selecting, and implementing technology applications, conducting partial mechanisation based on geological conditions, and considering this the “leverage” in the coal mining process. Accordingly, regarding open-pit mining, the Corporation has researched and applied reasonable methods and order of mining, transportation, and dumping for each area of the mines to promote the roles and features of machinery and equipment in production, such as deploying transportation trenches to avoid production congestion and increase transportation productivity (at Eastern Da Mai and Western Khe Sim mines) and arranging the reasonable order of mining areas to ensure coal production, reduce the soil transportation distance at open-pit mines (Eastern Da Mai, Binh Tan, Western Khe Sim, and Southern Trang Bach). At the same time, to limit the processing of sludge at the mining pits, the Corporation has directed its subordinates to create secondary temporary pits in mining areas of exploitation, transportation trenches, and floor lines to distribute drainage flows and sludge deposition (Western Khe Sim and Eastern Da Mai mines). Particularly, due to the complex geological characteristics of mines in the condensate area and the large amount of water hidden below the strata, the risk of water collapse can occur at any time. To overcome this problem, the Corporation has applied water pumping technology in boreholes and minimised the use of water-resistant explosives to both ensure safety and savings and reduce production costs by tens of billions of dongs per year.

Pit mining is extremely hard, toxic, and dangerous work. Therefore, the Corporation has deployed a series of applications, technical solutions, and advanced and modern mining technologies into production, such as the cross-sloped pit system at high slopes (Seam 4, Khe Chuoi mine; Seam 7, Southwest Khe Tam mine); the pit technology schemes 1.0.0 and 1.0.1 into mining without leaving the guard pillars (at Khe Sim Company, 45, 91); ZRY soft truss and mechanical soft truss technologies in of cross-sloped pit mining instead of single hydraulic truss technology and stratified seam pits to ensure safety in mining, increase the recovery of roof coal and pillar coal and labour productivity, reduce excavation length, and lower the product prices. In addition, the Corporation has put single-disk tractors into operating pits with thin seam thickness at Seam 10T (Khe Sim Company) to increase labour productivity by more than 1.9 times compared to manual excavation and ensure maximum recovery of resources and coal quality. It has also piloted the semi-mechanised mining pit technology using the MG125/150-WD single-disk tractor to truss GTL1600/16/24MK pits at Northern Quang Loi mine (Company 790) and achieved good results.

Implementing the motto of “Safety first, then production”, the Corporation has adopted many undertakings and solutions to direct the work of occupational safety and hygiene assurance. The subordinate units have strictly implemented regulations, processes, and regimes of duty guard in production; done well the work of education, fostering, and training to raise the self-awareness regarding occupational safety and hygiene and fire prevention and fighting for cadres, workers, officials, and employees; proactively provided sufficient forces, means, logistics, and technical facilities under the motto of “4 on-the-spots”; and promoted the application of technologies to identify, warn, detect, and timely handle risks of insecurity in production to contribute to reducing accidents and labour incidents compared. Notably, the Corporation has effectively implemented reasonable ventilation solutions, especially Vensim and Ksamazu softwares, in the calculation and management of mine ventilation and used large fan types with FBDCZ No (10-22) reversal structure for the main ventilation stations at the mines and pits and multi-level fans FBDY, DBKJ,... to ventilate the excavation mirror mines with a large local ventilation length from 300 m - 1500 m to shorten the construction time of the clearing pit lines, accelerate the coal exit of the mining areas, increase labour productivity, and improve working conditions. Besides, the Corporation has focused on installing, transferring, and successfully operating automatic concentrated pit air monitoring stations, connecting, and transmitting results over the Internet to the offices of units and Corporation for management and administration; installing and operating surveillance cameras to monitor the operation of carrying people on tilted well; managing coal vehicles using the GPGS navigation system, etc.

With the view that production and business development must be associated with environmental protection, the Corporation has invested in a closed self-propelled conveyor system to transport coal from processing warehouses to the ports to prevent dust and coal from falling, while saving costs, labour, and vehicles in loading, transportation, and environmental protection. The Corporation has also installed and operated the automatic wastewater monitoring system with 14 stations that continuously transmit data, such as flow (input and output), temperature, pH, COD, Fe, Mn... to Quang Ninh Provincial Department of Natural Resources and Environment for the functional agencies to monitor and evaluate the amount of wastewater discharged.

Thanks to drastic and synchronous solutions for implementing the breakthrough in research, innovation, application of technology, and promotion of initiatives and technical improvements in production, the Corporation's coal mining output in the 2015 - 2020 period reached 127%. The coal consumption was 149%, while the total revenue was 158%, exceeding the previous period. In 2021 alone, the Corporation produced more than 7.2 million tons of raw coal; consumed 10 million tons of coal of all kinds; and reached a revenue of more than VND 18,000 billion and a profit of over VND 586 billion. The average income of employees was more than VND17 million/person/month.

Promoting the achievements, in the coming time, the Corporation continues promoting research, development of science and technology, technological innovation, modernisation of appropriate production stages; improving safety levels; improving working conditions; and exploiting resources economically and efficiently. Particularly, it will focus on implementing schemes and projects under the Government's Coal Industry Development Plan to stabilise production and contribute to ensuring enough coal to supply thermal power plants, organisations, and households for consumption; promoting the application of 4.0 technology right from the drilling process, firmly grasping geological fluctuations in the ground, and observing coal seams through 3D model; researching and applying mechanised equipment in the stages of excavation and coal mining based on the scale and capacity of pits and mines; and strengthening the coordination with units under Vietnam National Coal - Mineral Industries Holding Corporation Limited in solving problems related to mining techniques, especially the dumping and drainage of open-pit mines, to jointly maintain safe and effective production and build Dong Bac Corporation to become a leading enterprise in coal production, processing, and trading to contribute to ensuring national energy security. 

Senior Colonel PHUONG KIM MINH, General Director of he Corporation