eMining AG, created jointly by Kuhn Schweiz AG and Lithium Storage GmbH, has won the European eMove360° award with its eDumper. It is the world’s largest electric tyred vehicle, with an unladen weight of 45 t and a total weight of 110 t. eMining AG converts conventionally powered machines to electric drive for the mining industry and markets them world-wide. eMining AG says it helps its customers achieve their goal of “carbon-free mining”.
On October 16, 2017 the winners of the coveted innovation award were named at a formal gala ceremony in Munich. eMining AG won the eMove360° award in the electric vehicles category, ahead of the co-finalists AtTrack, TUMcreate and Volkswagen. The first 110 t eDumper was ordered by Ciments Vigier SA. The electric dumper truck from Switzerland, which was designed and built over the last 18 months and which has just completed the first test runs, breaks no less than three world records. The eDumper is the largest and most powerful battery-operated electric tyred vehicle ever. In addition, it is fitted with the largest ever battery manufactured for an electric vehicle.
Also, never before has a single individual vehicle been able to save such a large amount of CO2. Furthermore, when in operation it produces CO2-free electricity, as it conveys limestone and marlstone from an extraction area situated higher than the processing plant below, with the gravitational potential energy converted to electricity. Unlike a diesel-engined vehicle, the eDumper never has to be refuelled; power generated using energy recovery braking on the fully laden downhill run is used to charge the batteries for the unladen return trip. If all the calculations are correct, the eMining dumper will even be able to export power to the local grid in breaks between working. Twenty journeys per shift should result in a daily surplus of 200 kWh.
The eMining AG company assembled a team of innovative minds, highly motivated technicians, engineers and professors and with the support of the Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE) to face the major challenge set by Ciments Vigier SA. “The greatest challenges lay in acquiring the relevant data in order to make available identical or superior motive power, the choice of the appropriate type of storage and the assembly of the cells into multiple reliable batteries, plus the construction of an appropriate motor which could achieve both the maximum speed of 40 km/h and cope with the enormous forces required to drive a weight of 110 t up a 12% gradient.”
The components required to do this provide this impressive overall performance. Both the motor (by Oswald Motoren GmbH), the transmission (Puls Getriebe GmbH), the batteries (Lithium Storage GmbH) and the inverter (Aradex AG) are all new designs based on the latest generation of industrial products. In September/October 2017, these components were installed into the empty chassis of the Komatsu HD 605-7. The hydraulic pumps for the multi-disk brakes, tipper drive, servo support and pre-loading of the auxiliary braking system are driven by another 200 kW electric motor from the Bernese Oberland (Brienzer Motoren AG). The 700-kWh storage battery, consisting of four blocks, is fitted into the engine space and the space normally occupied by the diesel tank.
The initial test runs are currently being conducted in Lommis in the canton of Thurgau. In November the roadworthy machine will arrive in the Rondchâtel industrial zones in Péry-La Heutte, where a new structure consisting of a steel/rubber tipper will be fitted to the rear. The green eMining dumper Number 1 will then travel through a 2.2 km tunnel into the La Tscharner extraction area, where it will be tested under the harshest conditions and handed over in spring 2018 to Ciments Vigier as the world’s largest Plus Energy vehicle (capable of exporting electricity). Over the next 10 years, eMining dumper Number 1 will transport more than 300,000 t a year and will be complimented in about a year’s time when Ciments Vigier provides it with an identical colleague, enabling two times 1,300 t of CO2 and 1,000,000 litres of diesel to be saved.