...mine3161 GaRZweiler Open Pit Mine Rhineland, Germany Nicholas Duim 20781646 * 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...
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