Spotlight Feature Articles Joy Global Surface Loading & Drilling April 16 | Page 7

SURFACE DRILLING AND LOADING
on an overall lump sum turnkey basis. The design
rate per individual machine is 5,460 m3/h (loose)

The Industrial Solutions business area of
thyssenkrupp will presents a new generation of
compact bucketwheel excavators at Bauma 2016
Shark,” both machines can work in hard
materials with compressive strengths of up to 50
MPa. While bucket wheel excavators today
mostly work in soft and medium-hard rock with a
UCS of up to 20 MPa, this newly designed type of
equipment is capable of working in a broad range
of materials including coal, limestone, phosphate
rock, potash, frozen materials in winter conditions
as well as in corresponding overburden layers.
In order to fulfil the requirements of the severe
working conditions, special bucket and tooth
designs have been applied by thyssenkrupp
Industrial Solutions. These designs are based on
innovative testing methods and include a larger
number of teeth and buckets. This stage of
development of bucket wheel excavators
demonstrates the changing character of the
extraction process from digging to cutting.
“The combined extracting and loading process
within a single machine eliminates hazardous
and ecologically harmful blasting as well as
additional loading activities. That is why health
and safety standards at the highest level can be
ensured. Considering the fact that the new
bucketwheel excavators are able to produce
throughputs of over 3,000 t/h, a lesser number of
vehicles and manpower are required, the
operational expenditures can be reduced
significantly.”
To get a first impression of the new generation
of compact bucketwheel excavators from
thyssenkrupp, their working principle and
application possibilities, a model of the

“Barracuda“ will be on display at Bauma 2016.
thyssenkrupp told IM that it has supplied several
standard size bucketwheel excavators to Serbia
in recent years. In addition, thyssenkrupp has
executed multiple modernisations and
refurbishments of bucketwheel excavators in
Germany, India, Kosovo and Serbia.

Tenova TAKRAF’s bucketwheel evolution
Tenova TAKRAF is a pioneer in bucketwheel
excavator (BWE) technology, having supplied the
world’s first machines for industrial use in the
early 1920s. Then and now, its office and
workshop in Lauchhammer, Germany is the
centre of expertise for Tenova TAKRAF’s mining
technologies. The company told IM: “There has
been a 90 year evolution of BWEs that reached
its peak in the 1980s in the various German
lignite mines. This is where Tenova TAKRAF
installed one of the largest machines ever, a true
giant, with a daily capacity of about 240,000 BCM
[bank cubic metres] at RWE’s Hambach mine.
BWE technology has also been successfully
introduced in various countries ranging from
other mines in central and southeastern Europe
to Asia and Australia. In conjunction with
shiftable and quickly relocatable conveyor
systems, the overall operating costs are very low.
It has been proven that for medium and longterm operations for soft and medium-hard
materials, the lifecycle costs are unbeatable as
compared to shovel and truck operations.”
In 2015, Tenova TAKRAF finalised its most
recent BWE project for NLC at the Neyveli lignite
mine in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. This
project was conducted and executed mainly by
TAKRAF India with support from TAKRAF Germany

which refers to about 40,000 m3 of bank material
per day. With a 34 m long bucketwheel boom, the
machine can reach a digging height of 30 m. This
is roughly 2.5 times more than what the largest
shovels can safely handle. “The design of these
excavators was adapted to the significant variety
of Neyveli’s overburden characteristics between
soft and sticky at the one extreme, and hard and
very abrasive at the other.”
Tenova TAKRAF also received an order to
conduct the entire maintenance for the machines.
“This is a very interesting new area for us”, Dr
Frank Hubrich, CEO of Tenova TAKRAF, told IM –
“It’s a typical win-win situation for us as the
OEM, and for our client. We become part of the
daily operation and we are thus able to quickly
fine tune details of the machine for improved
performance and availability.”
Just a few months before the hand-over in
India, Tenova TAKRAF passed a performance test
with its latest BWE from the well-known SRs
2000 series, which boasts more than 50
worldwide installations. It is also employed in
overburden applications; however the challenge
in this instance pertained to both the slope
conditions an