Fachartikel 03_2024

The topic of “sustainability in mining” is by no means new in Germany and has been repeatedly rethought as a result of technological developments since the time of Georg Agricola. However, it was the 1972 study “The Limits to Growth” that first raised public awareness of the finite nature of natural resources and initiated a continuous rethink. As a result, ...

The industrial ecosystem is currently undergoing major changes. Global drifts in the markets, new advanced technologies, new market requirements, but also the ever-increasing demand for higher efficiency and sustainability are moving all segments of industry. In order to be able to accompany this change as a partner, the Large Drive Application Division of Siemens AG, Berlin and Munich/Germany, was reorganized ...

The Geokompetenzzentrum Freiberg e.V. (GKZ), Freiberg/Germany, unites industry, universities, specialist authorities and local authorities as a network along the entire value chain of mineral raw materials and the development of conventional and renewable energies in the sense of a circular economy. The association focusses on research and development (R&D), training and further education as well as market exploration and national/international ...

The increasing need of raw materials necessitates the exploitation of new deposits, potentially leading to (very) deep underground mines. With the help of fully automated machines and/or autonomous robots it is aimed to open difficult to access deposits or re-open abandoned mines. In the past four years, the consortium of the European-wide H2020 Resilient Bio-inspired Modular Robotic Miners (ROBOMINERS) project ...

As part of the „Deep Sea Sampling“ research project, a trench cutter adapted for the extraction of marine massive sulphide ores shall be lowered from a ship into the deep sea and positioned and aligned on the seabed with the help of a landing unit (1). Once there, the system shall cut several slots into the rock at defined locations ...

The Heilbronn rock salt mine, which is owned by Südwestdeutsche Salzwerke AG, Heilbronn/Germany, has already carried out several trials aimed at reducing the impact of blast shocks occurring at ground level. Salt extraction is carried out at a moderate depth of around 200 m and targets the shelly limestone formations of the Triassic period. The relationships being investigated in the ...

Fire hoses have been an elementary component of fire-fighting equipment since ancient times. The properties of the hoses have been improved through constant further development in production. Milestones were the development of hose lines made of canvas in the 17th century, the first rubberised hoses in 1865 and the introduction of the Storz coupling as a standard coupling. However, pressure ...