Assessment criteria for innovative technologies in mining industry

The energy safety of Poland at present and in the future is connected with the capability of safe and economically efficient extraction of coal scams. To this end it is necessary to make an assessment of the level of innovativeness of the technologies of mining coal scams with identification of those elements that need modernisation and may be improved with an advantage in economic efficiency. Innovativeness of mining technologies may be described by appropriate criteria. Each technology, independently from its time of use, possesses some characteristic features which arc a result of either some evolution of an older technology or a necessity of working out a new technology adapted to changed geological and mining conditions. To have a basis for making an assessment of innovativeness it is necessary to define the assessment criteria and to determine how deep into details the criteria should go. The first level would include some a priori assumed criteria that should be fulfilled by each of the technologies to be assessed in the view of the present trends in development of the art of mining. The second level, being of high degree of details, would deal with the assessment of innovativeness related to its particular elements. i.e. isolated organisational units, work stations, machines and devices, techniques of executing tasks, etc. The most general level of assessing a technology includes general criteria related to the possibility of: modernising a technology in the direction of its development by the use of the state of the art solutions from worked out in the industries cooperating with the underground coal mining industry - criterion of the present time technology level in other high-tech industries; meeting by a technology the assumed functions in terms of technology, safety, productiveness, remuneration, minimisation of coal left in deposits, robustness, reliability in changing conditions of the work environment - criterion of "effectiveness" in terms of adapting a technology to changing outside conditions; modifying a technology in the technical and functional aspect, as a result of modularity of its infrastructure which assures its universality in relation to technical elements and outside conditions - criterion of "universality" in relation to technical elements and outside conditions; minimising impact on the natural environment, i.e. limitation of the mining damage, reduction of mine water or its desalination, commercial use of methane, selective extraction of deposits, etc. - criterion of environmental "non-noxiousness"; usage of deposits currently regarded as commercially unusable e.g.: underground gasification of coal, wider use of shortwall working and plough winning-criterion of possibility of mining deposits currently considered as technically unusable or commercially not interesting; maintaining or increasing the broadly understood safety of people and of the technological process criterion of safety of people and of the technological process. Knowing that type of general priorities in relation to mining technologies allows a three-stage qualitative assessment, i.e. split of mining technologies into conservative, developing and innovative ones, and at the same time allows assessment of individual.