Subsidence control and farmland conservation by solid backfilling mining technology

Solid backfilling mining technology, which decreases the height of fissure zone and caving zone, and alleviates the subsidence, is a new technology for farmland conservation. Based on the situation analysis of farmland destruction in mining area, three ways for farmland protection were proposed. In order to improve the feasibility of this technology, the limited filling materials should be used to increase resources recovery ratio, and then the surplus materials could be backfilled into goaf. An index, namely farmland conservation ability, was put forward to optimize the ways for farmland conservation. At last, the Wanbei coal mine was taken as a case for farmland conservation. It was shown that 3240 t dull coal was substituted and 52 hm2 farmland was conserved by solid backfilling mining in this coal mine.