Falkenstein mine
| Falkenstein | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| General information about the mine | |||
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| Mining technology | Civil engineering , roof construction | ||
| Rare minerals | Calcite , barite , pyrite , chalcopyrite | ||
| Information about the mining company | |||
| Start of operation | 1959 | ||
| End of operation | 1973 | ||
| Successor use | Waste disposal company | ||
| Funded raw materials | |||
| Degradation of | Iron ore | ||
| Greatest depth | 385 m | ||
| Geographical location | |||
| Coordinates | 50 ° 43 '22.1 " N , 8 ° 21' 57.2" E | ||
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| Location | Oberscheld | ||
| local community | Dillenburg | ||
| country | State of Hesse | ||
| Country | Germany | ||
| District | Dillenburg mountain area | ||
The Falkenstein mine was an iron ore mine near Oberscheld ( Dillenburg municipality ) in the Lahn-Dill district . The pit lay between Oberscheld, Herborn-Seelbach and Eisemroth .
history
At the beginning of the 1950s, it was clear to Hessische Berg- und Hüttenwerke that most of their mines could no longer mine. Therefore, they are looking for a raw material replacement for the company's two blast furnace plants in Oberscheld and Wetzlar . From 1952 onwards, the south-western area of the Eisernene Hand camp train was investigated using drilling technology and a red iron stone deposit was found with a content of around 40% iron and a thickness of 6–8 m in some cases. In September 1957 a start was made to level a colliery yard and to create an access road; several hectares of forest were cut down for this purpose. The 4 m diameter, round main shaft (from 50 m depth 3.5 m) at 430 m above sea level was sunk on January 13, 1958 not far from the historic Hohen Strasse , only two kilometers from the Oberschelder blast furnace and reached a final depth of 365 m ( of which 15 m sump). He was charged with 30 cm thick concrete expanded . Half of the shaft team from the Königszug mine was taken over for this purpose. The shaft jacking was carried out in three shifts around the clock and one moved 8.6 cm per man per shift. In the upper Rinkenbachtal, at the same time as the shaft, a tunnel planned as a loading tunnel was set up and driven onto the shaft, which it reached after 150 m at a depth of 40 m.
In January 1960, the 24 m high headframe went into operation and iron ore mining could begin. They drove the 350 m level, sat two shaft landings and drove a cross passage in a north-westerly direction to the iron ore before. In the spring of 1960, the weather shaft was sunk approx. 750 m east of the main shaft in the same way as the main shaft and connected to it underground at the 350 m level. The daytime facilities consisted of the colliery house , kaue , shaft hall , crushing and screening plant including underground ore bunkers and the loading facility in the Rinkenbachtal. There were also buildings for the generation of compressed air and the power supply. The colliery building and the laundrette were designed for up to 300 workers and the administration also found space here.
The compressed air generation had an output of 45 m³ / min. The crushing and classifying plant had an average throughput of 40 and a maximum of 70 t / hour. After processing, the ore was transported on a conveyor belt to be loaded at the tunnel exit, loaded into trucks there and transferred to wagons on a loading ramp in Oberscheld, 1.2 km away. The construction of a cable car was originally also under discussion. In 1972 the total production ore output of the mine was 8 t per man and shift.
closure
After the Königszug mine was closed in April 1968, the mine worked in two shifts until 1971 and around 140,000 t of iron ore were mined annually. From 1971, due to sales difficulties, the company switched back to single-shift operation. A Ruhr smelter, which processed 5000 tons of Falkenstein iron ore / month, had put a new sintering plant into operation. Due to the increased use of sinter ore, the smelting of Roteisenstein, which had previously been used as a slag carrier, was superfluous. In addition, two blast furnace plants in Siegerland that had also purchased Falkenstein iron ore went out of operation. As a result, sales decreased to 5000 t / month. The extraction of this rather small amount of ore was not utilizing the full capacity even in single-shift operation and thus the profitability of the mine operation was no longer given. Therefore, the Falkenstein mine was shut down on August 31, 1973, although the new 385 m underground excavation was already in the outcrop, which means that 1.5 million t of ore were reliably detected. Up to this point in time, the deposit still had 2 to 3 million t of iron stone, which could be considered worthwhile . The output of the pit could even have been increased by using a modern drill and charger. From September 1973, a remaining workforce only carried out dismantling work. With the closure of the mine, the two thousand year old mining of Roteisenstein in the dill area, which had formed the basis of the local iron and steel industry, ended. The total production of the mine was approx. 1 million tons of iron ore.
Successor use
The site of the former pit and mine building is used by the disposal company SITA Mitte GmbH & Co. KG , which became part of Suez Deutschland GmbH in March 2016 .
geology
In the southeast and east of the Rhenish Slate Mountains lies the so-called "Hessian Synklinorium", which also includes the Lahn-Dill area . The Hessian Synclinorium , which was formed by thrusting and folding in the Paleozoic ( Devonian ), has a complicated geological structure. It is characterized by fault lines, uplifts and faults . There are no large contiguous deposits in the Lahn-Dill area.