Fachartikel 02_2020

The cessation of coal mining in North Rhine-Westphalia on 31st December 2018 marked the start of a period of long-term aftercare measures. The end of coal winning also meant that the original purpose of the mine dewatering operations, which was to make it possible to extract the resources in the first place by collecting the mine water and pumping it ...

The northwards migration of the coal mining industry created a well-developed network of underground roadways and this allowed interconnected collieries to be organised as combined water drainage systems. This resulted in a centralisation of the water pumping operations. The mine water is currently pumped to the surface at a total of 13 pumping stations – RAG Aktiengesellschaft, Essen/Germany, has long-term ...

Optimising the mine de-watering arrangements involves converting the centralised drainage systems to water wells. In order to retain access to the mine water a series of casing pipes has to be cemented section by section into the filling column. These pipes can then be used at some future date to accommodate a number of submersible pumps. In view of the ...

The Friedlicher Nachbar shaft in Bochum is one of the 13 central water pumping stations operated by RAG Aktiengesellschaft, Essen/Germany. One of the unusual features of this installation is that the operation to convert to a well-type system has to be carried out without switching off the pumps in the auxiliary ventilation shaft as any such shutdown would result in ...

It is well known that longwall mining leads to a significant amount of surface subsidence. This is driven by a mechanical stress-deformation process that is initiated when the roof collapses in the mined-out area. Since entire coal basins recently have been closed in Europe, the focus has moved more to the long-term impact of mining. In various European coal basins, ...

The landscaping of the State Garden Show 2020 in Kamp-Lintfort and the concomitant on-time clean-up and preparation of the area for future uses that are required are some of the special challenges facing RAG Montan Immobilien GmbH, Essen/Germany, which has been sustainably revitalising closed mining sites for more than 40 years. The park area of the State Garden Show on ...

The Research Institute for Post-Mining (FZN) at TH Georg Agricola University (THGA) in Bochum/Germany, has developed an integrated approach to meet the challenges of the post-mining era. Therefore, post-mining covers four research areas: Perpetual tasks and minewater management; Geomonitoring in post-mining; Material science for the preservation of industrial heritage; Reactivation and transition. The institute is trying to fulfill central requirements ...

The goal of the German government’s new national raw materials strategy is to confront current and foreseeable future challenges in securing raw materials for the German economy and in particular for the German industry from 2020 onwards. Issues of sustainability will be given greater priority than in the first raw materials strategy from 2010, and for the first time aspects ...

The year 2019, just as the previous years 2017 and 2018, was a very poor one for hard coal in Germany. Electric power generation using hard coal was down by 31 % in 2019. Over the three years 2017, 2018 and 2019, cumulative power generation from hard coal fell by 49 % in comparison with 2016, i. e. by half. So the de ...