Showing posts with label coal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label coal. Show all posts

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Here's a photo


Image source: www.paul-zimmer.de

By the way: the railway does not pull but pushes the brown coal to its destination.

Here's more information about brown coal:

»»» http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_coal

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

A different look at transport


Image source: Wikimedia

I happened to come across the subject of brown coal, its mining and finally its transport ... quite interesting:

"The lines of the works railway of the company RWE Power (former Rheinbraun) in the Rhenish brown coal area are electrified with single-phase AC current of 50 Hz at a nominal voltage of 6 kV which is different from the railway current/voltage common in Germany (15 kV at 16 2/3 Hz). In view of the large quantities transported the locomotives need high pull force, therefore the electric locomotives have all been specially designed. So, the locomotives of the EL 1 series were the first electric locomotives with thyristor controller worldwide and thus a milestone in the development of rail vehicles."

»»» Further information see Wikipedia

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

What is a dragline excavator?



Dragline excavation systems are heavy equipment used in civil engineering and surface mining. In civil engineering the smaller types are used for road and port construction. The larger types are used in strip-mining operations to move overburden above coal, and for tar-sand mining. Draglines are amongst the largest mobile equipment (not water-borne), and weigh in the vicinity of 2000 metric tonnes, though specimens weighing up to 13,000 metric tonnes have also been constructed.

A dragline bucket system consists of a large bucket which is suspended from a boom (a large truss-like structure) with wire ropes. The bucket is manoeuvred by means of a number of ropes and chains. The hoist rope, powered by large diesel or electric motors, supports the bucket and hoist-coupler assembly from the boom. The dragrope is used to draw the bucket assembly horizontally. By skillful manoeuvre of the hoist and the dragropes the bucket is controlled for various operations.

»»» Source: wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragline_excavator