Friday, December 3, 2010

Dredging on a large scale

The extraction of raw materials is now largely automated. Mining companies want to really get away from the hand that makes the work of the miners safer - but ehöht the risk of pollution.

"Good luck comes, the Steiger" Herbert Grönemeyer sings at gigs like the Ruhr, and the whole concert hall with singing. The pot is mine and miners' songs, like the song Steiger still present, although the former is of dozens of coal mines, only a handful in operation. The mining industry will disappear from the precinct. What remains Mining romance and cultural monuments like the Zollverein.

Elsewhere, the material degradation of romantic swan songs away. In 2008, companies promoted worldwide nearly 16 billion tons of raw materials, building materials such as sand and gravel excluded. Most of whom make fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas, the second largest item are iron ore and steek alloying agents such as nickel and cobalt. About half of it is mined in Asia. The amount of the extracted commodities has been increasing for decades in order to meet the growing needs of industrial and emerging countries. This is only possible by ever larger and more powerful machines.



Hoe and shovel are long gone. They were replaced by Drilling, dredging, and explosives. There is a distinction between the machine for the extraction of commodities, ie those that solve such ore or coal from the rock, and machinery for the transport of raw materials. What devices are used depends on several factors: which raw material is broken down, whether above or below ground, in which rock or other surface it appears.

Drilling, blasting and cutting

Do miners such as in underground mining raw materials extracted from hard rock, drill or break them. In softer rock is cut. The yield transport the miners with loaders or similar vehicles, the so-called tipping points. There, the dissolved material is mechanically crushed, placed on a conveyor system and transported to the surface.

Many work in mining operations have become automated or partially automated. Drilling in the computer controls a number of processes, including the delivery device automatically go to the part. "They want to really get away from the hand work," says Oliver Langenfeld, director of the Department for Natural Resources and practice in underground mines at the Institute of Mining of the Technical University of Clausthal.

Another step on the way to mining without manual work currently taking place in the driving loaders to transport the raw materials for tipping: take alternate routes through the mine and can therefore not always been controlled by computer. "But even here there are first signs of automation," said Langenfeld.

Open pit automatic control techniques are more common than in mining. For the devices that come about when brown coal pit mining is used, are often controlled satellite. Under the earth can not use the satellite. Especially as the mines reach deeper into the earth: Miners dig in now up to 5000 meters depth for mineral resources. In order to spare the workers, the high temperatures at that depth, while mining companies can now install the latest technology to their machines and control them as from a more distant perspective.

To receive the data there, but they need a quick and possibility of wireless data transmission. "That does not count for any mining company," says Attila Baki, Head of underground drilling and geotechnical engineering at Atlas Copco MCT, the German distributor of the Swedish construction company Atlas Copco.

With increasing automation will work for miners safer, said Baki. Mine disasters such as recently in Chile today can be avoided. Besides working professionals working to reduce the noise level of the machines and increase their productivity. Another point being researched, is the environment. Many machines for the extraction of raw materials to swallow large quantities of hydraulic oil - pulls a hose around a drilling vehicle can flow before 200 liters of oil in the ground. "Biodegradable oils limit but the life of the equipment," said Baki. Manufacturers are therefore working on machines, the Eco-oil is better tolerated.

Greenpeace: "We must break down at all on fossil fuels"

Such efforts are likely to satisfy opponents of the resource extraction difficult. The show a direct correlation to more fundamental problems that caused the degradation of coal, gold and other commodities. "Disappear by the lignite mining, for example, entire villages," said Christoph von Lieven, energy expert at the environmental group Greenpeace. For brown coal mining in North Rhine-Westphalia Garzweiler around several villages had already been soft, to the anger of its people.

In Canada, in turn, to build this from deserted wilderness in raw materials - but a large area contaminated the environment. In the province of Alberta bound in sand and clay store's second largest oil reserves on earth. In mining, the oil using steam is released. "The process frees heavy metals like mercury, which seeps into the groundwater, a large part," says Lieven. More modern machines can reduce the raw material in his view, make no more environmentally friendly and those responsible would also be expensive. "We must fossil fuel did not abolish", so is the conclusion of the environmentalist.

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