Highlights

The ELMAR research project, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Action (BMWK), aims to integrate and demonstrate electric and autonomous transport vehicles in raw material extraction operations. This will be done with special consideration of maintaining process reliability and ensuring electrical supply security, as well as their coupling to renewable energy sources within the framework of ...

There is an old saying that “mining is not a one-man operation”. This is borne out by the ongoing dialogue that is needed across the disciplines to manage the environmental issues associated with the mining life cycle at a local and wider level. Given the global nature of the mining industry we now need to develop a productive outcome by ...

Mining law is explicitly linked to spatial planning law in section 48(2) second sentence BBergG (BBergG – Federal Mining Act), and the latter is of major significance for operating plan approvals under mining law. The INSTRO reform report calls for greater consideration of spatial planning concerns – rightly so? This leads to the fundamental question: To what extent should and ...

Achieving the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement limiting the global temperature increase to 1.5 °C will require massive investment in renewable energy. The transition to a decarbonized energy system will lead to a huge increase in demand for minerals, especially metals, rare earth elements (REE) and lithium, making the energy sector a major force in commodity markets. More mining ...

The exploration of space has fascinated humankind for decades. Along with this, establishing a colony on other celestial bodies, such as the moon or Mars, has gained increasing interest. For building such a colony, the use of extraterrestrial raw materials is of great importance. In order to make these raw materials usable, just as in terrestrial processes, the first tasks ...

One of the main challenges facing us today is the environment and how to protect it. Mining activities over the years have had an enormous impact on the three environmental elements water, soil and air. Ground movements in mining areas can be observed both during the mineral winning phase and after this has ended. This phenomenon may affect the water ...

High precipitation, dams and waterworks make the Harz Mountains a large freshwater supplier. But, challenges arise based on climate change and extreme weather events. Old mine working can support water management if integrated into the system. Successful planning and integration need a holistic understanding of the regional water cycle, the current situation of the mine workings and the interaction. The ...

Das Forschungsprojekt ARTUS zielte auf die Entwicklung von Systemen für die ganzheitliche Umsetzung eines vollständigen Belade-Entlade-Zyklus durch eine autonome Sonderfahrzeugflotte ab. Eine Herausforderung hierbei ist der Aufbau einer Kommunikationsinfrastruktur für Bergbauumgebungen und die Sicherstellung benötigter Maschine-zu-Maschine-Kommunikation (M2M). Dieser Artikel präsentiert Projektinhalte und Forschungsergebnisse des Institute for Advanced Mining Technologies (AMT) der RWTH Aachen University (RWTH), Aachen, im Bereich der M2M-Kommunikation ...

The ARTUS research project aimed to develop systems for a holistic implementation of a complete loading-unloading cycle conducted by an autonomous fleet of special-purpose mining vehicles. A key challenge in developing such systems is providing the communication infrastructure and ensuring technical capabilities to fulfil needs for machine-to-machine communication (M2M). This article presents project works and research results of the Institute ...

Every mining operation and mine site will, as such, come to an end one day and so will transition to the post-mining era. That is simply part of the economic evolution. As for the post-mining sector, which it has long neglected, conventional economic science still finds it hard to accept realistic explanations of evolutionary developments. And yet productive ideas on ...