The scope of the article covers prospects for revival of the coal mining industry in Russia, the associated issues of recovery of development in the coal mining machine building industry, machine industry as a whole and the machine tool building as well as the related requirements.
The conditions for recovery of development in the coal mining machine building industry and adjacent branches include: promotion of engineering profession to a level of engineering ranking actual in the advanced countries; elaborated governmental system of material and non-material motivation of engineers; production projects (including technical assignment/commercial offer and implementation); restitution of field supervision; restoration of management and product quality control.
The analysis embraces some of alternative methods of coal mining and processing: underground gasification; coal production using heavy media processes, which is the technology of coal breakage in liquid medium with a density higher than coal density; coal extraction using compressed air energy. The use of high-pressure compressed air energy (70–80 MPa) solely enables implementation of all operations, starting from coal detachment from rock mass and finishing with coal delivery to a mine shaft.

Keywords

Сoal industry, machine building, coal mining machine building, machine tool building.