Waste mine to emerging wealth: Innovative solutions for abandoned underground coal mine reutilization on a waste management level

Abandoned coal mine reutilization plays a critical role in the sustainable development of the mining industry. Scientific decisions on reuse modes are a prerequisite and crucial issue to efficiently explore the idle resources of abandoned mines. This paper classified the reuse modes into 6 types with 19 sub-patterns and generalized the influence conditions into 3 categories with 17 sub-indexes, including mine conditions, natural and geological conditions, and supplementary conditions based on literature review and data sources. A logical deduction method named condition-mode was proposed from the constraint conditions and their degree of constraint to select the preliminary reutilization patterns of abandoned mines. Finally, a practical example of the Beijing west mining area was introduced to demonstrate the applicability and feasibility of the proposed method. The results indicate that this method can be employed to select some potential reuse patterns for abandoned underground coal mines. The most important implications are that the significance of more detailed analyses and techno-economic appraisals on multiple schemes from these decision results, which suggests a stepwise integration approach to generate a more promising subset of inference results. The research can provide a reference for the reuse of underground coal mines that have been closed or will be closed. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.