UNESCO World Heritage Site: Zollverein Coal Mining Industrial Complex: #05 - Shearer Loader Crusher

October 2019 · 4 min read · Essen

Hello lovely Steemians !

I already presented to you the Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex (“Zeche Zollverein”). This complex is located in Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia, in Germany and inscribed in the year 2001 in the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites as the largest on of its kind in Europe. You already saw the Coal Mine Shaft 1/2/8 (since 1847), the Coal Mine Shaft 12 (since 1932) and the Coking Plant (since 1961). This posts topic and the previous one are about some equiptment that I would like to show to you.

One half of the Roller of an "SL 500" Shearer Loader

The rotating rollers of a shearer loader were equipped with cutting tools that were manifactured from especially hard Widia steel to cut the coal down from the seam. After the maschine had progressed along one destination on the longwall of the seam it was hydraulically pulled further up, so it was able to also cut coal on its return. Thereby water jets served to bind the dust that was caused by the cutting process. The shearer loader was manifactured by the Eickhoff Maschinenfabrik & Eisengießerei GmbH. It has a diameter of approximately 2 metres and a weight of 1.5 tonnes. The overall mashine weight was a total of 120 tonnes.

Roller of a Type "SL 300/420" Shearer Loader

The shearer loader type SL 300/420 for the cutting extraction of coal was designed for low to mid-sized seam heights of 1,8 metres to 3 metres. Here again, cutting tools made of especially hardened Widia steel and jets of water to bind the dust were used. The shearer loader was also manifactured by the Eickhoff Maschinenfabrik & Eisengießerei GmbH. It has a diameter of approximately 2 metres and a weight of 3 tonnes. The overall mashine weight was a total of 45 tonnes.

Crusher

Roll shearer loader and coal ploughts were used to cut or slab of the coal from the seam. Then the coal was initially transported with the face conveyor (chain conveyor) from the longwall. However, the coal shards were too large for further transport out of the mining shafts. Therefore the coal lumps were first transported to a crusher, a mechanical crushing system to break the shards in smaller pieces, before they could progress along rubber belt feed conveyors, trolleys and skips through the mine to the winding shaft from where they had been transported to the surface by the skip carriers. The whole crusher weights a total of 25 tonnes.

Widia Steel

Widia Steel is a special steel that was produced by Krup, a heavy industry company that started out at the end of the 19th century, also in Essen, as a mining coorporation. Widia stands for "WI.e DIA.mant", which tranlates to "LIKE DIAMOND" in english. It is basicly a cemented carbide. Those are mainly used for the maifacture of hard materials for cutting tool. Back in the days mainly tungsten carbides (WC) were used, but nowadays also titanium carbides (TiC), or tantalum carbides (TaC) are utilised.

Thank You !!

This was my last post for the Zollverein Coal Mining Industrial Complex. I really hope that you enjoyed this little photographic tour of me through all of the different parts. I have to admit thst those were quite a lot pictures but after five parts this series is concluded now. Thank you all for your nice comments and support so far !! I am really happy that I was able to reach out to some interested steemians out there ;)