Fachartikel 2017

The 2006 Sago, Darby, and Aracoma mine disasters in the USA forced the US government to implement legislation (MINER Act) that, among other measures, requires all US underground coal mines to install and maintain refuge chambers to manage emergencies in fires or explosions. However, there is still a debate on whether this is a good strategy. Australian coal mines adopt ...

Following the 2006 explosion at the Sago mine in West Virginia/USA twelve miners were trapped without communications for 47 h in a self-made barricade. When mine rescuers finally arrived, eleven of the twelve had died of CO poisoning. This prompted the US government to enact the MINER Act and follow-up regulation, requiring all underground coal mines to maintain mobile underground ...

Germany’s domestic lignite output decreased by 3.7 % from 178.1 mt to 171.5 mt between 2015 and 2016. 2016’s extracted lignite had a net calorific value of 52.7 mtce. 155.2 mt, or more than 90 %, of that output was used in utility power plants supplying the general public. This translates into a decrease of 2.6 % compared to the previous year. 14.2 mt ...

The cessation of coal production at Herne-based RAG’s last two collieries at the end of 2018 will mark the end of several hundred years of mining in the Ruhr, Saar and Ibbenbüren coalfields in Germany. The end of the production period will immediately be followed by a decommissioning phase during which the current underground workings will have to be evacuated ...

For some 40 years Essen-based RAG Montan Immobilien has been helping shape structural change in North Rhine-Westphalia and Saarland by way of future-oriented and sustainable development projects. Based on former mining land these initiatives range from sports centres, business parks and logistics sites through to smart, liveable urban quarters. RAG Montan Immobilien is currently responsible for around 9,400 ha of RAG ...

With annual production of almost 3.5 mt of K2O, former East Germany (GDR) was the third-largest producer of potassium, ranking behind only the Soviet Union and Canada. More than 80 % of production was intended for export, to obtain urgently required hard currency. For this reason, beginning in the 1970s, East Germany also began mining of otherwise unprofitable hard-salt deposits and ...

Prospecting for uranium began in the Upper Cretaceous sandstones of the Elbe river valley southeast of Dresden in 1961. Systematic mine operations commenced 1964. As a response to low and decreasing ore grades alternatives to conventional mining were precociously searched for. Development of in-situ leaching technology started at the end of the sixties leading to a changed exploitation method using ...

Mining activities often influence huge areas which can only be observed efficiently with remote sensing methods. Recently the European Programme of Earth Observation Copernicus began to offer the opportunity to pursue this monitoring with innovative attempts in the production phase as well as in the post-mining phase. The combination of spatial data gained from satellite-supported sensors allows a precise verification ...

This article calls for a better consideration as well as integration of health and safety issues into all parts of the surface mining industry and points out the strong affiliation of occupational safety and modern mine planning projects. By the example of four major occupational safety issues – slope stability, bench width and height, planning of driveways and ramps, schedule ...

It is often necessary to stabilize the backfill material in mining applications. The spectrum can range from stabilizing powdery materials with particle sizes of a few tenths of a millimeter, to mixing filter cake with lumps larger than a human fist, to dry processing or to manufacturing nearly liquid sludges. Mixers that cost-effectively process large quantities of materials into homo-genous ...