By analyst
By Andrew Topf
When mining companies need to move a lot of material they turn to some of the biggest equipment in the business. Bucket wheel excavators, spreaders and large-belt conveyors are capable of moving up to 240,000 cubic metres of overburden a day in some of the biggest open-pit mines in the world.
thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions AG is a leading manufacture of continuous mining systems – where material is cut from the mining face and loaded onto conveyor belts in a continuous operation rather than having to work several headings at once. The Essen, Germany-based company makes bucket wheel excavators, beltwagons, tripper cars, spreaders, and in-put crushing equipment (mobile ore semi-mobile crushers), all connected to conveyors that move overburden onto waste piles or crushed rock onto the next phase of processing.
With a history spanning 200 years, thyssenkrupp is a deeply rooted European conglomerate, with fingers in a number of industrial pies, including chemicals, cement, steel, fertilizer, automotive, naval technology and aerospace. Among the products thyssenkrupp is know for are elevators, passenger “skybridges” for airports, and steel – the company is one of the largest steel producers in Europe. thyssenkrupp is also into shipbuilding, with contracts to build frigates, and is a market leader in the manufacture of conventional (non-nuclear) submarines.
Originally a merger of two companies – the Krupp Company founded in 1811 and Thyssen in 1867 – thyssenkrupp started off making bucket wheel excavators for soft-rock mines moving material like lignite and soft overburden, then gradually diversified to in-pit or beside-the-pit crushing systems for hard-rock mines.
“While in hard-rock mines we could not apply the bucket-wheel technology, so we said, Okay then. Why don’t we put semi-mobile crushing stations on strategic locations inside the pit or at the rim of the pit and shorten the truck haulage,” said Thomas Jabs, thyssenkrupp’s executive vice president for operating unit mining systems, in a recent interview with MINING.com.
While the company still makes bucket wheel excavators and other equipment for soft rock mines, about two-thirds of its order book is for semi-mobile or fully mobile crushing systems used in hard-rock mines. The equipment is used all over the world, but is particularly active in copper mines in Chile and iron ore mines in Brazil, according to Jabs.
A new piece of equipment for thyssenkrupp is the BARRACUDA compact bucket wheel excavator, which is specially designed to move harder minerals like thermal or metallurgical coal, or phosphate. In May thyssenkrupp sold its first order for a BARRACUDA to China Huaneng Group, which is scheduled to go into operation next year at the Yiminhe open-pit coal mine in Inner Mongolia. The special bucket-wheel configuration allows the BARRACUDA to cut harder materials; combining mining and loading in a single machine also eliminates the need for blasting and separate loading operations, making it safer and more efficient.
Overland belt conveyor system in Macedonia transporting coal from open pit mine to power station.
thyssenkrupp bases its value proposition on having a wide portfolio of continuous mining systems compared to its competition, which includes all …read more
Source:: Infomine
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