Overburden Conveyor Bridge F60
Encyclopedia
Lignite
Lignite, often referred to as brown coal, or Rosebud coal by Northern Pacific Railroad,is a soft brown fuel with characteristics that put it somewhere between coal and peat...
(lignite) opencast mining in the Lusatia
Lusatia
Lusatia is a historical region in Central Europe. It stretches from the Bóbr and Kwisa rivers in the east to the Elbe valley in the west, today located within the German states of Saxony and Brandenburg as well as in the Lower Silesian and Lubusz voivodeships of western Poland...
n coalfields in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. They were built by the former Volkseigener Betrieb
Volkseigener Betrieb
The Volkseigener Betrieb was the legal form of industrial enterprise in East Germany...
TAKRAF
MAN Takraf
TAKRAF is a German industrial company based in Leipzig. TAKRAF is short for Tagebergbau-Ausrüstungen, Krane und Förderanlagen . It is one of the world's leading manufacturers of heavy surface mining and transportation equipment...
in Lauchhammer
Lauchhammer
Lauchhammer is a town in the Oberspreewald-Lausitz district, in southern Brandenburg, Germany. It is situated on the river Schwarze Elster, approx. 17 km west of Senftenberg, and 50 km north of Dresden....
and are the largest movable technical industrial machines in the world. As overburden conveyor bridges, they transport the overburden
Overburden
Overburden is the material that lies above an area of economic or scientific interest in mining and archaeology; most commonly the rock, soil, and ecosystem that lies above a coal seam or ore body. It is also known as 'waste' or 'spoil'...
which lies over the coal seam. The cutting height is 60 meters, hence the name F60. With a length of 502 meters, it is described as the lying Eiffel tower
Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower is a puddle iron lattice tower located on the Champ de Mars in Paris. Built in 1889, it has become both a global icon of France and one of the most recognizable structures in the world...
. In total, the F60 is up to 80 m high and 240 m wide. In operating condition, it weighs 13,600 metric tons.
There are still four F60s in operation in the Lusatian coalfields today: in the brown coal opencast mines in Jänschwalde
Jänschwalde
Jänschwalde is a municipality in the district of Spree-Neiße in Brandenburg in East Germany. It is situated in the region of Niederlausitz...
(Brandenburg, near Jänschwalde Power Station), Welzow
Welzow
Welzow is a town in the district of Spree-Neiße, in southeastern Brandenburg, Germany. It is situated 16 km northwest of Hoyerswerda, and 23 km southwest of Cottbus....
-Süd (Brandenburg, near Schwarze Pumpe Power Station), Nochten and Reichwalde (Saxony, both near Boxberg Power Station
Boxberg Power Station
Boxberg Power Station is a lignite-fired power station with three units at Boxberg , Saxony. Since the late nineties it produces 1900 MW...
). The fifth F60, the last one built, is in Lichterfeld-Schacksdorf
Lichterfeld-Schacksdorf
Lichterfeld-Schacksdorf is a municipality in the Elbe-Elster district, in Brandenburg, Germany....
and is accessible to visitors.
Technology
The F60 has two bogieBogie
A bogie is a wheeled wagon or trolley. In mechanics terms, a bogie is a chassis or framework carrying wheels, attached to a vehicle. It can be fixed in place, as on a cargo truck, mounted on a swivel, as on a railway carriage/car or locomotive, or sprung as in the suspension of a caterpillar...
s (chassis with wheels), one on the dumping side (front) and one on the excavating side (back), which each run on two rails (standard gauge
Standard gauge
The standard gauge is a widely-used track gauge . Approximately 60% of the world's existing railway lines are built to this gauge...
). In addition to the two rails on the excavating side, there are another two rails for the transformer and cable cars. There are a total of 760 wheels on the bogies, of which 380 are powered. The maximum speed of the F60 is 13 m/min (0.78 km/h) and the operating speed is 9 m/min (0.54 km/h).
The F60 has two excavators of type ES 3750 on the sides to do preparatory work (see the panoramic photograph from the Jänschwalde mine), one each on the northern and southern crosswise conveyor. They each have an output of 29,000 m³/h (50,000 t), which corresponds to a volume the size of a soccer field with a depth of 7–8 m. There are nine various overburden conveyor belts with a speed of 10 m/s.
The F60, including the two excavators, requires 27,000 kW of power. The bridge needs 1.2 kWh of electricity to convey a cubic meter of overburden, from the crosswise conveyors up to the dumping at a height of 75 m.
The Lichterfeld F60
The overburden conveyor bridge of Lichterfeld-SchacksdorfLichterfeld-Schacksdorf
Lichterfeld-Schacksdorf is a municipality in the Elbe-Elster district, in Brandenburg, Germany....
, now shut down, was used from 1991 until 1992 in the brown coal mine Klettwitz-Nord near Klettwitz
Klettwitz
Klettwitz is a German village of Brandenburg, belonging to the municipality of Schipkau, situated in the historical region of Lusatia.-History:The village was first mentioned in 1370 with the name of Cleticz...
. It is open for visitors today as a project of the Internationale Bauausstellung Fürst-Pückler-Land (International Mining Exhibition Fürst-Pückler-Land) and is an anchor of the European Route of Industrial Heritage
European Route of Industrial Heritage
The European Route of Industrial Heritage is a network of the most important industrial heritage sites in Europe. The aim of the project is to create interest for the common European Heritage of the Industrialisation and its remains...
(ERIH).
This F60 is the last of five F60s. The installation was carried out between 1988 and 1991 in the Klettwitz-Nord opencast mine. The F60 began operation in March 1991. Between its commission and its shutting down in June 1992, it moved around 27 million cubic meters of overburden. After the German reunification
German reunification
German reunification was the process in 1990 in which the German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic of Germany , and when Berlin reunited into a single city, as provided by its then Grundgesetz constitution Article 23. The start of this process is commonly referred by Germans as die...
, the mine became the responsibility of the Lausitzer und Mitteldeutsche Bergbau-Verwaltungsgesellschaft (Lusatian and Middle-German Mining Administrative Society, LMBV), which closed the mine on the orders of the German federal government and renovated it economically and in a way not harmful to the environment.
Between 2000 and 2010, the Internationale Bauausstellung Fürst-Pückler-Land is pursuing the goal of giving new momentum to the region and the former opencast mine of Klettwitz-Nord has also been integrated into that concept. The mine has been converted into a 'visitors' mine' and the conveyor bridge has been accessible since 1998. Various sound and light installations help make the facility an attraction for visitors.