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The demand for belt conveyors in bulk material transportation: The applications of belt conveyors cover industrial sectors such as coal, metallurgy, building materials (cement), power generation (thermal and hydroelectric), food processing, the chemical industry, and transportation, as well as areas related to construction projects and production processes. The current demand for belt conveyors is mainly reflected in the following areas: 1) Coal mining. The continuous and semi-continuous mining methods adopted in coal mines since the 1970s, with semi-continuous mining being particularly the approach favored for the development of deep pit open-pit mines and hard-rock open-pit mines. The maximum hourly production capacity of open-pit mines ranges from 9,000 to 10,000 t/h, with some reaching nearly 20,000 t/h. The overall structural types are displaced and semi-mobile belt conveyors. Shift-type belt conveyors with a bandwidth of 1,600 to 2,400 mm are the focus of research. 2) The transmission systems from mines to power plants, or for storage, processing, and transportation, generally have transmission distances ranging from a few kilometers to several dozen kilometers. In the case of large-scale storage and handling terminals, the length of the conveying systems used for loading and unloading can reach 1–2 km. To reduce the time required for loading and unloading ships, it is necessary that the conveyor capacity be 10,000 tons per hour or higher. The distance between large bulk carriers and storage areas or silos can be as much as 20 km. For example, the length of the coal-conveying belt conveyor from the Tianjin Port Bulk Cargo Logistics Center to the coal terminal in Southern Xinjiang is 8984 m. The straight-line distance from Shengli Energy No.1 Open-pit Coal Mine in Xilinhot, Inner Mongolia, to the Shengli Power Plant’s coal transportation system is 9 km, of which the length of the long-distance belt conveyor is 8,700 m. 3) As a large number of open-pit mines are gradually moving towards deep-cutting mining methods, either by switching to underground mining or by increasing the number of levels in the mines, the volume of material that needs to be transported – including stripped material and uncrushed minerals – can reach 3,000–5,000 tons per hour. The lifting height is 200–700 meters, and the conveying inclination angle is 50°–90°. This poses challenges to the capabilities of belt conveyors; although foreign companies have conducted research on this topic, there are yet no practical engineering examples. There is a trend toward using belt conveyors for lifting minerals in underground coal and metal mine operations, but belt conveyors with large lifting capacities available in China yet cannot meet the requirements of such applications. 4) The minerals extracted from mines are transported from the mountains to storage yards or mineral processing plants at lower elevations, with a vertical drop of 400–600 meters or more. Due to limitations imposed by conveyor belts and their components, when the vertical drop exceeds 500 meters, multiple belt conveyors are usually used in sequence for transportation; therefore, there is a need to develop belt conveyors capable of transporting materials over a distance of 600 meters or more with a single unit. 5) Requirements for greening and environmental protection: In recent years, due to environmental regulations, some mining areas have integrated their mineral transportation systems, shifting from the previous short-distance, low-capacity belt conveyor systems to mainline conveyors that can cover distances of 5 to 25 km, with transport capacities of over 3,000 tons per hour ； 6) Tunnel construction includes projects such as transportation infrastructure in the western regions, water transfer projects, transportation projects across rivers and seas, underground facilities for strategic energy storage, urban rail transit construction, and the construction of underground utility tunnels. **Due to the significant demands associated with infrastructure development, there is a high need for belt conveyors that can facilitate continuous waste removal in conjunction with TBM machines ； The length of belt conveyors required to excavate tunnels using TBM at present is roughly 10 to 25 km. 7) Gravel and aggregate: **Against the backdrop of increasingly strict regulations on the supply of gravel and aggregate, accelerated investment by state-owned capital in this industry, and the pursuit of greener and more intelligent practices by gravel enterprises. The sand and gravel aggregate industry has a strong demand for belt conveyors. In China, the conveyor lines for transporting sand and gravel aggregates reach 31 km in length. The long-distance belt conveyor built by Anhui Changjiu New Materials Co., Ltd. in 2018 is the belt conveyor with the highest logistics volume in the world. 8) Internal enterprise production processes include conveying, transferring, stacking, sorting, etc ； Due to limitations in terms of space and building facilities within the enterprise, the belt conveyors inside the plant are relatively short, but there are a large number of them; for example, in Baosteel’s Phase 1 facility, there are over 600 sets of belt conveyors, with a total length of 57 km ； 9) Although the specifications of belt conveyors have reached a very high level, the length of individual conveyor units and the strength of the conveyor belts still need to be continuously improved in order to meet the demands of various applications for belt conveyors.