Recently, the 2025 National Science and Technology Award Conference was held in Beijing. The China Coal Technology and Engineering Group (hereinafter referred to as CCTEG) received five national science and technology awards for its scientific and technological achievements. Among them, the "Key Technologies and Equipment for Transparent Perception and Intelligent Prevention and Control of Mine Water Hazard Risks," led by the Xi'an Research Institute of CCTEG, won the second prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award.
"This technological system has comprehensively propelled mine water disaster prevention and control into a new 'data-driven intelligence' stage, effectively resolving the development dilemma of China's tens of billions of tons of mineral resources threatened by water hazards, significantly enhancing the level of safe resource extraction under complex hydrogeological conditions, and providing crucial support for the security of national strategic mineral resources," said Dong Shuning, a first-level chief scientist at CCTEG, deputy director of the National Key Laboratory of Coal Mine Disaster Prevention and Control and director of its Water Hazard Prevention Sub-Laboratory, and director of the Science and Technology Committee of the Xi'an Research Institute. He stated that overall, this scientific and technological achievement can technically "activate" China's tens of billions of tons of coal reserves threatened by water disasters, providing technical support for national energy security.
The development of this scientific and technological achievement stems from China's complex and unique mine hydrogeological conditions.
"China has the most complex mine hydrogeological conditions in the world. Whether for coal mines or metal and non-metal mines, the constraints of water disasters on mining operations are the most prominent globally, directly impacting the self-sufficiency capacity of strategic mineral resources such as coal and iron ore, and threatening mineral security," Dong Shuning noted. According to statistics, over 3,600 coal mines in China are threatened by water hazard risks, accounting for approximately 86%.
It is against this backdrop that the research team from the Xi'an Research Institute of CCTEG focused on mine water disasters, a major problem that has long constrained industry development. They proposed a new technical route of "intelligent water disaster prevention and control supported by geological transparency," aiming to fundamentally eliminate the dual constraints of water hazard risks on mining safety and efficiency.
The difficulty in preventing and controlling mine water disasters lies in the fact that the causative factors are highly concealed and, influenced by mining disturbances, are time-varying, making water hazard risks "invisible, indistinguishable, and uncontrollable."
"Our research efforts have precisely targeted these two major difficulties," Dong Shuning explained. On the theoretical level, the research team established a theory of time-varying seepage evolution leading to water inrush in mining-disturbed rock masses. On the technical level, they developed technologies and equipment for ultra-long-distance detection of water hazard risks and full-space monitoring and perception. These can not only identify the state of causative factors thousands of meters in advance but also accurately capture dynamic responses during the mining process. Based on this, they constructed a transparent mine hydrogeological platform and developed a complete set of technologies for intelligent early warning, targeted treatment, and collaborative prevention and control, shifting water disaster prevention and control from "passive response" to "active prediction."
He stated that this truly achieves "clearer measurement, more precise identification, and more refined treatment," systematically solving the technical challenges of efficient and reliable mine water disaster prevention and control.
According to reports, many achievements of this project have been included in the promotion catalogs of national ministries and commissions, applied in over 100 mines across the country, and exported to six countries, including Australia and Bangladesh.
Looking ahead, advancing coal mining to greater depths has become inevitable, and issues such as high-intensity mine water inflow, strong rock bursts, and high gas outbursts, along with the combined manifestation of multiple disasters, are becoming increasingly prominent.
"The Xi'an Research Institute of CCTEG will focus its research directions on the safe, efficient, intelligent, and green extraction of deep coal resources," said Wang Hao, a member of the R&D team and Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee and General Manager of the Xi'an Research Institute. He mentioned that the Xi'an Research Institute will concentrate on tackling the root prevention and control of disasters in deep coal mines, developing technology and equipment systems for advanced dynamic fine detection of concealed hazard-causing factors and integrated collaborative prevention and control of multiple disasters, to fundamentally mitigate safety risks in deep coal mining. Relying on the self-developed first vertical geological large model for mines in China, it will build a transparent geological assurance system encompassing full-domain intelligent perception, dynamic assessment, automatic early warning, and production guidance, laying a solid technical foundation for unmanned and less-manned intelligent coal mining.