Garzweiler Mine

MINE3161

GARZWEILER OPEN PIT MINE

RHINELAND, GERMANY

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Garzweiler mine is located within the Rhineland basin west of Cologne, Germany. The largest single lignite or brown coal deposit in Europe is found in Rhineland which covers an area of around 2,500 km2. Since lignite is the youngest variety of all coals, forming in the early to middle Miocene age about 15Ma. Several coal seams are formed and join up in the center of the Rhenish basin to form one main seam which reaches a maximum thickness of about 100m. Mining operations are carried out by RWE Power, one of Germanys biggest power producers and extraction of energy materials with an about 30% share in electricity generation is no. 1 in Germany and no. 3 in Europe with a 9% share. Lignite extraction by RWE Power AG totals 100 million tonnes a year with 90% of this output goes into power generation in the RWE Power’s power plants. The rest is upgraded to make briquettes, pulverized lignite, fluidized bed lignite and coke.

Garzweiler I mining operations have been continued westward since 2006 on into Garzweiler II measuring 48km² that contains 1.3 billion tonnes of lignite accounting for 40% of the Rhineland brown coal to be mined out by 2044. The mine is a large scale open pit that uses the strip mine to continuously mine out lignite. Mining activities start with the stripping of overburden and this is followed by mining the uppermost flat-laying lignite seams, then interburden to uncover further lignite seams. The overburden is used to backfill already excavated sections of the mine and is discharged by spreaders and forms the basis for the high quality reclamation that follows next. The iconic mining equipment used in operations is the bucket wheel excavators with the daily output of a modern day scale excavator used such as the Bagger 288 model at Garzweiler can remove 220,000 tonnes of coal or overburden per day. Spreaders are able to distribute up to 240,000 m3 of the overburden earth mass a day that is fed through a conveyor belt network totally 66km moving at up to 7.5m/sec and rail operations are also used to move the mined material and distribute the coal product.

Most of the Garzweiler mine will be reclaimed for agricultural use once extraction of lignite ends. Dewatering and flood control systems are used in Garzweiler operations to ensure safe and dry mining. Dust is controlled through the use of spraying masts located all around the mine and engines of mining machines are encased to reduce noise. Reclamation of the land back to farmland or some recreational land is carried out after areas have been mined out. The Garzweiler open pit mine was named after the village that was relocated between 1984 -1989 to a point four km distant on the northern border of Juchen.