TY - JOUR
TI - Application of stochastic models for mine planning and coal quality control
AU - Stevanović Dejan R
AU - Kolonja Božo M
AU - Stanković Ranka M
AU - Knežević Dinko
AU - Banković Mirjana V
JN - Thermal Science
PY - 2014
VL - 18
IS - 4
SP - 1361
EP - 1372
PT - Article
AB - The power plant owner is interested to know in advance the quality of coal to  be burnt which should meet maximal efficiency of power plant and the  environmental regulations. There is the need to control and to predict the  quality of coal at the mine site to meet sulfur emission requirements. Coal  quality control between the mine site and the utility plant is a complex  problem owing to the variable nature of coal properties (heating value,  sulfur, ash), even within the same coal seam. Due to the fluctuation of the  coal quality, mine planning and coal homogenization are in fact an  optimization problem under uncertain conditions. To deal with these issues a  stochastic optimization model is developed for an illustrative coal  homogenization problem. Mining block grades from an optimized mining schedule  are used to simulate any given homogenization process in stockpiles  throughout the mine`s life. Sulfur content is treated as lognormally  distributed random variable. The objectives of the model include minimizing  the expected sulfur content and standard deviation in sulfur content. The  methodology was illustrated using the case study on Kolubara surface coal  mine.