ABSTRACT
There has been a great need to substantially increase the coal production in the coming decade to meet the demands of growing economy of several countries. Continuous highwall mining is been around for over 25 years. This technology enables to extract locked-up coal at final highwall and some thin coal seams, even less than 1.0 m, otherwise un-mineable with other existing technologies. This chapter introduces highwall mining method, its development history and experience in various parts of the world. The operational aspects of a highwall miner and the recent developments taken place in the past two decades are explained in this chapter. The different commercially available highwall mining systems, especially their cutting and conveying methodologies, and limitations are also given in brief. The chapter also enlightens the readers on the applicability of highwall mining in a gamut of geotechnical scenarios, the safety precautions to be undertaken and also enlists its benefits to the society in general and coal mining companies in particular. The world scenario of highwall mining, especially the experience from countries such as USA, where it was first practised, Australia, India, Indonesia, Thailand, etc. is given in brief.
