Kaiser Wilhelm Shaft (Clausthal)
| Kaiser Wilhelm Shaft | |||
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| General information about the mine | |||
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| Information about the mining company | |||
| Start of operation | April 1, 1880 | ||
| End of operation | March 31, 1980 | ||
| Funded raw materials | |||
| Degradation of | Lead luster , zinc blende | ||
| Greatest depth | 952 m / 1050 m (blind shaft) | ||
| Geographical location | |||
| Coordinates | 51 ° 48 '15 " N , 10 ° 20' 40" E | ||
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| Location | Clausthal-Zellerfeld | ||
| local community | Clausthal-Zellerfeld | ||
| District ( NUTS3 ) | Goslar | ||
| country | State of Lower Saxony | ||
| Country | Germany | ||
| District | Clausthal mining inspection | ||
The Kaiser Wilhelm Schacht or bay Kaiser Wilhelm II. Was the central conveyor and Seilfahrt s shaft of the lead - and zinc - mining in Clausthal-Zellerfeld in the Upper Harz (Lower Saxony).
He was lying on the Burgstätter corridor train . The daytime facilities are located in the urban area of Clausthal at Erzstrasse 24, near the mining institute of the Technical University .
history
The mining of metal ores had already reached great depths in the Lower Burgstätter Revier in the second half of the 19th century . The then tonnlägige main conveyor shaft Duke Georg Wilhelm had come to its limits at 756 m depth and Kehrradförderung obsolete.
In 1880, the sinking of the Kaiser Wilhelm shaft began and was inaugurated on October 1, 1892. The preliminary depth of the round shaft with a clear diameter of 4.75 m was 864 m. In contrast to the older shafts with a length of tons, which were driven in the ore vein and thus already generated income when sinking, this shaft was sunk vertically ( saiger ) in the deaf rock and only reached the passage at a depth of about 600 m. This approach also required completely new financing channels.
The shaft was a steel headframe of the Nordhäuser Maschinenfabrik Schmidt, Kranz & Co. equipped. The height was 15.6 m. Originally there were two independent conveying facilities: a daily conveyance with an above-ground, steam-driven drum conveying machine and a blind conveyance from the deepest to the Ernst-August-tunnel ( deep waterway ) at a depth of 360 m. This conveyor system was equipped with a water column machine as a drive. The ores raised by blind extraction were until 1898 extracted on the deep water route with ore barges to the Ottiliae shaft and from there to the surface.
A second water column machine on the Ernst-August-Stollen-Sole operated a driving art made from steel profiles (length 854 m) for the entry of the miners. This was unusual, but it was a tribute to the old Upper Harz tradition that no miner should be forced to drive on a rope. In the Ruhr area and in potash mining , the cage was already being driven in at this time.
At the end of the 19th century, the first Pelton turbine for generating electricity was installed at the level of the Ernst-August-Stollen. As with the water column machines, the drive water was fed into the shaft via a downpipe. Shortly thereafter, this system was expanded to include two Pelton wheels, which were directly coupled to dynamos. The operating voltage of the system was 300 volts , and both generators could deliver 90 to 100 amps .
In addition to this system, there was also a compressed air generator at the level of the Ernst-August-Stollen for the compressed-air-operated mine railway , which transported ore from the Bergmannstrost mine via the Königin-Marien-Schacht to the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Schacht. This machine generated 30 atm by compressing compressed air from 4 to 5 atm in a pressure vessel with the help of water flowing in from a 360 m high riser and directing the compressed air into a second vessel. This process used 280 liters of water per minute or 168 cubic meters per work shift. Two workers were required to operate.
Between 1900 and 1905 the Kaiser Wilhelm shaft was used because of the reconstruction work on the Ottiliae shaft for the daily extraction of all ores from the Burgstätter corridor train, as this was the only efficient extraction shaft. The ore was transported over the surface to the central processing facility on an electric field train , the so-called daily conveyor line. After 1905, all ores were only lifted to the deepest waterway at a depth of around 600 m and then reached the Ottiliae shaft underground by electric mine train .
For blind extraction, a blind shaft was built in 1914 near the Kaiser Wilhelm shaft to a depth of around 1050 m.
In 1923 Preussag took over the state mines as the owner. In 1924, the surface winder was converted to an electric drive and the art of driving was shut down. From then on, entry took place in the cage . The global economic crisis and the constant drop in metal prices on the world market prompted Preussag to shut down the Clausthal ore mine in 1930.
Decommissioning and temporary use as a power plant
After decommissioning as a mine shaft, the existing hydropower plant was expanded to include 6 turbines. From a 33 square kilometer catchment area, water was brought in using the water management ponds and ditches of the Upper Harz water shelf in Clausthal and discharged into the shaft via several downpipes. The electricity was generated at the level of the Ernst-August-Stollen at a depth of around 360 m and the water could then flow off via the Ernst-August-Stollen. The output of the power plant was at last a total of 4.7 MW with a flow rate of 1.7 m³ / s. This enabled around 10 million kWh of electricity to be generated in a mean year.
This hydropower plant was shut down at the beginning of the 1980s, after the profitability of the power plants declined more and more with sharply rising wages and stagnating electricity prices. In addition, the state of Lower Saxony was no longer willing to extend the water rights, as they wanted to give preference to the supra-regional drinking water supply. It was discussed to set up a visitor mine and to enable guests to take a boat trip on the 3 km long section of the Ernst August tunnel to the Ottiliae shaft. The project failed because of the high costs. The shaft was closed in 1984 with 60 m of concrete. A short upper section was preserved at the insistence of the monument protection. After the daytime facilities had been left to decay for a few years, the Harzwasserwerke took over the site in 1990 and set up a technical depot there.
Technical monuments, traces
The workings have been thanks to the acquisition faithfully restored by the Harzwasserwerke and provide a completely preserved above-ground ore mine complex from the 1880s is today. Built in 1880 and steel headframe is after the Ottiliaeschachtes the second oldest in Germany.
The shaft hall and the hoisting machine house are officially looked after by the Upper Harz Mining Museum. A small information path is available. The shaft hall can be visited. Inside, it is possible to look into the shaft up to the concrete filling at a depth of 8 m. The winder, built as a steam engine in 1882, is still in the machine house. Despite the conversion to an electric drive, the guides for the cross heads of the connecting rods can still be seen. In the former kaue there is an exhibition on the Upper Harz water shelf . The workshop building serves the current owner as a company building.
In the outdoor area there are faithful replicas of an artificial bike and a sweeping wheel based on a model by Henning Calvör .
Technical description of the field railway and daily conveyor line
The light railroad provisionally put into operation in 1900 enabled the surface transport of the ores extracted in the Kaiser Wilhelm shaft for ore processing in the Ottiliae shaft area. The ores withdrawn from the hanging bank of the Kaiser Wilhelm shaft were thrown into tipping dogs with the help of rotary luffers. Then you moved these tilting dogs by hand to a double filling roller, where they were emptied into the latter. Next to the roller was the station, which was built up so that the locomotives could easily move to the other side of the light rail.
Since the ores from the Bergmannstrost mine (Altenau) had to be brought to the surface via the Anna Eleonore mine shaft, tipped into a filling roller there and then also transported by hand to the filling roller at the Kaiser Wilhelm shaft, a branch line was laid from the terminal station at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Schacht to Anna Eleonore.
The 3.3 kilometer long field railway led from the Kaiser Wilhelm shaft on the chest of the Sägemühlengraben over the Zellbachstrasse and then on the chest of the Bremerhöher trench. It then ran around the western slope of the Bremerhöhe and ended at the Ottiliae shaft at the level of the top floor of the stone breaker building, where there was also a small train station. In the middle of the entire route there was a switch system so that two trains could pass each other, as the route was otherwise single-track.
The trucks were side dump trucks with a volume of 1 m³ . The daily output was 270 t . The greatest gradient for a full train was 2.6%, for an empty train 3%. The locomotives had an output of 25 hp with an efficiency of 0.75. They could pull 7 loaded wagons at 14 km / h. There were two locomotives in use per shift. Later a third locomotive was built as a reserve. This reserve locomotive had already been built in such a way that it could later be used underground on the deepest waterway.
The light railway was supplied with electricity via the underground system in the Kaiser Wilhelm shaft. Since both locomotives, when used at the same time, required an amperage of 112 amps on the steepest incline , traffic was regulated accordingly so as not to exceed 100 amps.
The cost of this type of daily transport was 0.15 marks / tonne-kilometer . Although the operation was only possible to a limited extent, especially in winter, these costs were 0.06 marks lower than for underground mining with ore barges.
In February 1905, the daily haulage line was taken out of service and mine railway operations on the deepest water line were intensified.
See also
literature
- Hermann Banniza: The mining and metallurgy of the Upper Harz . Enke, Stuttgart 1895 (VI. General German Miners' Day in Hanover).
- Ebeling: Development of the horizontal conveyance on the pits of the Royal Mining Inspection in Clausthal . In: Glückauf - Berg- und Hüttenmännische magazine . December 9, 1905, p. 1530-1536 .
- Axel Funke: Headframes of the Upper Harz: the scaffolding at the Ottiliae and Kaiser Wilhelm shafts in Clausthal-Zellerfeld . Upper Harz History and Museum Association, Clausthal-Zellerfeld 1984.
- Torsten Schröpfer: Treasure trove: Interesting facts about the West Harz mining and metallurgy . 1st edition. Pieper, Clausthal-Zellerfeld 2000, ISBN 3-923605-08-0 (series of publications by the Oberharzer Geschichts- und Museumsverein e.V. Clausthal-Zellerfeld).
- Lutz Markworth: Locked and locked: mining relics of the Royal Prussian Mining Inspection Clausthal . Upper Harz History and Museum Association, Clausthal-Zellerfeld 2002, ISBN 3-9806619-6-2 .
Web links
- Memories of the Kaiser Wilhelm Shaft - In conversation with miners from Upper Harz (film by Stefan Zimmer)
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Ebeling: Development of the horizontal conveyance on the pits of the Royal Mining Inspection in Clausthal. In: Glückauf - Berg- und Hüttenmännische Zeitschrift , No. 49, 41st year, 1905, p. 1533.
- ^ Ebeling: Development of the horizontal conveyance on the pits of the Royal Mining Inspection in Clausthal. In: Glückauf - Berg- und Hüttenmännische Zeitschrift , No. 49, 41st year, 1905, p. 1535 f.
- ^ Preussag AG: Permit applications for the Upper Harz Water Usage Law according to § 36.2 NWG unpublished, Goslar 1964
- ↑ written information from the last mine director at Preussag
- ^ Hugo Haase: Engineering structures of old water management in the Upper Harz . 5th edition. Pieper, Clausthal-Zellerfeld 1985, ISBN 3-923605-42-0 .