Regarding the complexity and inconsistency of results in existing evaluation methods of mine cooling system, this paper clarifies the advantages, disadvantages and application of various mine cooling systems through principle analysis, and divides all the cooling systems into air-cooling, ice-cooling and water-cooling according to the transportation of cold energy. On this basis, the paper proposes a simple and efficient evaluation method for mine cooling system. The first index of this method is the air temperature at point C which is 15 m away from the return wind corner at working face. A cooling system will be judged ineligible if the air temperature at point C is above 30 °C during operation, because in this case, the combustible gases in coal will sharply overflow, inducing gas incidents. Based on the preliminary judgment of the first index, another two evaluation indexes are proposed based on the cooling ability and dehumidification of an airflow volume of 1000 m3/min at point C to evaluate the investment and operation cost of mine cooling system. This evaluation method has already been successfully applied in the cooling system design of Zhangshuanglou coal mine.
