With the In-Pit Crushing and Conveying (IPCC) 2014 conference in Johannesburg, South Africa approaching in mid-November (see https://im-mining.com/ipcc2014) it is important to emphasise that these projects are still being advanced, often in unexpected places. Central Asia is certainly one of those. IM in the past has covered the Takraf IPCC semi mobile stations at the Wostotschnij coal mine in Kazakhstan; as well as the high angle conveying system at the Muruntau gold mine in Uzbekistan but there have been more developments since then, notably from Germany’s FAM, more known for large materials handling and stacker/reclaimer systems at mineral ports. At one of Uzbekistan’s most important coal mines at Angren, FAM is helping owner Uzbekcoal reach its coal production target of 6.4 Mt by 2015. FAM Group recently stated that the project “will further expand its market position in the field of mobile opencast mining and mineral processing systems and equipment.” Takraf has also supplied conveyor technology and equipment to the Angren expansion project.

Magdeburg-based FAM has supplied 5,000 t of equipment for the project via the Chinese company CCTEG.  In particular, FAM will provide three fully mobile units designed for conveying overburden with a throughput capacity of 4,000 t/h each. Furthermore, each system consists of a crawler-mounted crusher and a mobile conveyor bridge. The relevant spreader with tripper car is designed for 12,100 t/h and capable of dumping the material from three excavation faces. The entire system is completed by four FAM belt wagons with hopper and cable reel cars for transporting the coal to the bench belt conveyor with a capacity of 800 t/h each. The FZWB 2024 HS mobile crushing plants are designed for a throughput of 5,250 t/h each. They consist of an undercarriage with two steerable twin crawlers. The machine’s frame is supported on the undercarriage in a statically determined manner. Furthermore, a feed hopper, an apron feeder, a heavy-duty double roller crusher and a discharge belt conveyor complete the system. Shovel excavators feed the systems and ensure conversion of the discontinuous flow of materials into a continuous flow. Moreover, they also crush the material to grain sizes facilitating conveying on belt conveyors. The crushers are designed for high compressive strengths (up to 200 MPa) and can process grain sizes of up to 1.1 m in diameter.

The height-adjustable discharge belt conveyor of the mobile crushing plants transfers the material onto the mobile conveyor bridges. The latter are 90 m long and designed so that the material can be transferred onto the bench belt conveyor in a large range of angles and from three different crusher working levels which can be positioned between -15 m and +15 m relative to the level of the bench belt conveyor. This way a total working range of 45 m is available. The conveyor bridge which can be hydraulically leveled is supported at both ends on a twin crawler mounted undercarriage. At the discharge head of the conveyor bridge the crawlers are arranged on both sides of the bench and the material conveyed is transferred to the bench conveyor between the crawlers. The electric power required for the conveyor bridge and the crusher is supplied via a cable drum which is connected to this undercarriage. Neither a change of the working level nor turning around at the tail station of the bench belt conveyor require decoupling of the system, so the mobile crushers and the pertinent 90 m conveyor bridge need not be separated electrically. The three bench belt conveyors transport the overburden to the spreader whose 60 m long discharge boom allows dumping up to a height of 22 m.