Bottrop Coal coal mine Coal plough Face conveyor Prosper Haniel

Coal Mine Prosper Haniel VIII – Coal Plough and Face Conveyor

In December 2018 Prosper Haniel, the last active coal mine of the Ruhr area, was closed down. Before the end “Sounds of Changes”-project worker Konrad Gutkowski had a last chance to document its disappearing sounds.

The coal mine in Bottrop was founded in 1856. Regular mining began in 1863 with about 60.000 tons of coal per year. Until 2016 it reached a depth of 1240 metres and mined 1.8 Million tons of coal per year. During the “Wirtschaftswunder” in the 1950s up to 12.000 coal miners worked at Prosper Haniel. Structural change and the decline of coal mining began in the late 1960s. Due to high production costs in Germany coal has been increasingly imported from China, India and the USA. One after the other the coal mines in the Ruhr area were closed down.

The face within a mine is where the coal is extracted from a coal seam. Each longwall face has a technical set-up of face conveyor, coal plough or shearer and steel shields that support the walls and ceilings of the tunnel.

In this recording you can hear the coal plough along with the face conveyor. The rattling of the chain of the face conveyor can be heard throughout the recording. It becomes louder when the drive chain of the coal plough sets in. With a deep rumble the coal plough passes the microphone and loosened coal falls onto the face conveyor to be transported towards the large conveyor belt system.

Sound: Jens Meißburger

Photo and Video: Jochen Balke (Sirius Images)

Specs:

Decade:
Filesize:
Duration:
Channels:
2010s
128.4 MB
3 min 42 s
2 (Stereo)
Sample rate:
Bit rate:
Bit depth:
96 kHz
4608 kb/s
32 bit

Recorded on April 10, 2018
Prosper Haniel
Bottrop, GERMANY
Creative Commons License