Mine closure is a topic that is being discussed frequently as illustrated by the closure ceremonies of the last two German deep coal mines in December 2018. Besides the commemoration of the miners, the main question is what is to be done with the underground infrastructure of the abandoned mines? The closure of a mine can be cost-intensive; backfilling of ...
Read More »Fachartikel 01_2019
SOMP 2018 – Greetings of RAG Aktiengesellschaft
It’s a pleasure for me to welcome all of you to the 9th regional conference of the Society of Mining Professors (SOMP) at the TH Georg Agricola University in Bochum. As Chair of the University board, I would like to thank you all for coming to this prestigious institution to share your valuable knowledge and experience (Figure 1). Over the ...
Read More »Technical Developments at RAG over the past 50 Years
The new series of publications under the generic title “Documentation of technical developments at RAG” aims to preserve the know-how that the German coal industry has built up over the last 50 years, to provide a knowledge platform for specialists in this area and to disseminate this information to an international audience. This initiative may well also inspire engineers to ...
Read More »50 Years of Research and Development at RAG
This article aims to lay out the basis of and steps toward the variety of technical developments leading to the current state of technology. It starts with a quantitative overview of the past 50 years of research at RAG Aktiengesellschaft, Essen/Germany, followed by some aspects of the research content, the financing and organisation. This contribution can be seen as a ...
Read More »Longwall Mining – Development and Transfer
Longwall mining technology has made significant progress in the last 50 years of German hard coal mining. At the same time, the geological conditions in multi-seam mining where all but favorable, hard coal was mined in the world’s greatest depths in the Ruhr area. At the same time, coal seams had different heights and varying inclinations. Furthermore, they were often ...
Read More »Ruhr Area – Strata Control under Challenging Conditions
Main achievements in strata control at German hard coal mines of RAG Aktiengesellschaft, Essen/Germany, are described in this report. Exemplarily it is figured out for the Ruhr area – one of the great hard coal deposits in Europe. After a short review on geological orogenesis the challenges of the deposit will be explained regarding matters of strata control in roadways. ...
Read More »Developments in Mine Logistics at RAG
The history of mine logistics at RAG, Essen/Germany, since the company was founded some 50 years ago traces the developments that took place at a wide spread of collieries where multi-seam working was practised on different levels and at different depths. As the overall evolution of this technology is extremely complex it would not be possible here to describe these ...
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