Current status and development strategy of metal mines

Mineral resources provide an importantmaterial basis for a country's economic and social development.After decades of large-scalemining, the shallow-metalmineral resources of China have been reduced annually and the development ofmetal resources has reached the stage of comprehensive promotion of deepmining at present.Based on the investigation of a number ofmines in China and abroad and an extensive review of the relevant literature, this study summarizes the present situation and research progress ofmetalmining by focusing on themain technical engineering problems of deepmining and proposing some strategic recommendations to solve the problems of deepmining from six aspects, including the prediction and prevention of dynamicmining disasters, the control of hightemperature thermal environments and treatment of hazards, deep-well hoisting, deep-wellminingmethod and technology reform, new technology for deepmineral processing, and intelligent unmannedmining.The results include the following: (1) Themedium and long-term strategic research target for the deepmining ofmetals in China will be the depth of 5000m.(2) High efficiency and less restriction are characteristics of the cordless vertical lifting technology, which suggests that China should focus on the research and development of this technology and related equipment.(3) Combining themining of deepmineral resources with that of deep energy resources can effectively reduce the cost of deep cooling and offers a new way to solve the economic challenges of deepmining.(4) Newgenerationmining technologies need to change the original mining models and technologies, and the continuous mechanical cutting and rock breaking technology represent an important development direction for the future construction of ultra-deepmines.(5) The fillingmethod is one of themost effectivemethods for ensuring deep-production safety, and further research is needed on the fillingmaterial and filling process.(6) The conditions necessary for comprehensively promoting remote intelligent unmannedmining in China do notyet exist, andmining progress can be facilitated by university-industry collaboration.