News in Brief 01_2016

As part of the closing down of the German coal mining industry, the Auguste Victoria mine in Marl ceased to operate at the end of 2015 (Figure 1). This move means that there is now just one coal mine left in the Ruhr region of Germany and only two working coal mines in the entire country. It marks the end ...

November 2015 saw STEAG GmbH, based in Essen, commission the last eight turbines at its wind farm in Süloglu in the north-west of Turkey. A total of 20 wind turbines, each capable of generating 3.0 MW of electricity, have been put into operation there one by one since September. This huge on-shore wind farm project by STEAG comes just over ...

Energy consumption in Germany reached 13,335 PJ or 455.0 mt ce in 2015. According to provisional calculations by AG Energiebilanzen (German Working Group on Energy Balances), this constitutes a 1.3 % increase on the previous year. This rise is due for the most part to slightly colder weather compared with that in 2014, which was very mild, and the consequent need for ...

An endowed chair for Smart Mining Machinery will be joining the TU Bergaka-demie Freiberg in the summer semester of 2016. The chair will be working in the Faculty for Mechanical, Process and Energy Engineering and will be co-financed by the professional associations for construction/building materials machinery and for mining in the German Engineering Federation (VDMA) in partnership with the Research ...

Colombia is one of the world’s largest coal producers. Germany meets around one fifth of its coal needs via imports from Colombia, making it one of the country’s top three suppliers. The Columbian mining industry has come under criticism, however, for poor working conditions and low environmental protection standards. The Georg Agricola University of Applied Sciences (TFH), Bochum/Germany, and the ...

The Helmuth-Burckhardt Prize awarded by the German Raw Materials and Mining Association (VRB), Berlin, was presented in 2015 to two winners: Jasmin Korbmacher MSc and Nicole Prochnau MSc. The two prize winners both studied Raw Materials Engineering at the RWTH Aachen University, graduating with flying colours. The umbrella organisation for the German Mining Industry presented the young academics with their ...

Mining was one of the main topics of the VI. German-Chilean Business Summit “On the way to industry 4.0”, which took place on the 24th of November 2015 in Santiago. The conference was organized by the German-Chilean Chamber of Commerce and Industry and counted with the federal state North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) as partner. The event attracted more than 500 participants. ...

More than 110 professionals from the renewables and mining sectors attended the full-day conference on “Integrating Mining & Renewable Energy for Canadian Mining Companies: Bridging the Gap to Realize the True Potential – What Renewables can offer the Mining Sector” on December 9, 2015, at the Westin Harbor Castle, in Toronto. Hosted by the Competence Centres for Mining and Mineral ...

The South Australian commodity-developer Archer Exploration has confirmed the existence of ultra-pure graphene from graphite deposits at its Campoona mine on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula. The company is hopeful the ultra-high purity of graphene extracted from Campoona will allow for a more efficient and scalable resource giving it a strong foothold in the world’s emerging graphene market. Archer Exploration CEO ...

North Korea and its population of around 25 million people are considered to be poor despite the country boasting a demonstrable wealth of more than 360 different natural resources. The resources of tungsten, molybdenum, lead, baryte and fluorite that have been discovered and are available in North Korea make it one of the world’s top ten most resource-rich countries. In ...