A bucket chain excavator (BCE) is a piece of heavy equipment used in surface mining and dredging. BCEs use buckets on a revolving chain to remove large quantities of material. They are similar to bucket-wheel excavators and trenchers. Bucket chain excavators remove material from below their plane of movement, which is useful if the pit floor is unstable or underwater. [1]
The first documented use of a bucket chain excavator was in 1859 by Alphonse Couvreux, a French entrepreneur. Several Couvreux BCEs were used in the construction of the Suez Canal. [2]
A bucket chain excavator works similarly to a bucket wheel excavator, using a series of buckets to dig into the material before dumping it in the bucket chute and depositing it through a discharge boom. The primary difference is that the buckets are mounted on a flexible chain similarly to a chainsaw blade rather than on a rigid wheel. BCEs are used primarily to excavate material below the vehicle's superstructure while bucket wheel excavators focus primarily on excavating top soil overburden and/or resources. [3]
BCEs vary in range and size, although the majority of them are extremely large, with some capable of excavating 14,500 m3/h. The average BCE from Tenova Takraf for example, weighs around 1,150 tons and has a combined length of 58.5 meters, with a 23.5 meter long bucket ladder. The speed of the bucket chain is 1.22 m/s with a digging force of 1,170 kN/m2. [4] BCEs such as the RK 5000 from the Czech Republic weigh up to 5,000 tons. [5]
Nevertheless, bucket chain excavators are usually smaller than bucket wheel excavators, dragline excavators or conveyor bridges due to the limitations of excavating materials below the base of the vehicle.
The superstructure of a bucket chain excavator is similar to that of a bucket wheel excavator.
The primary component of bucket chain excavators is the bucket ladder and the bucket-chain. Unlike the buckets on a BWE, the buckets on the chain face downwards, allowing the machine to remove overburden or materials significantly below the bench or travel level. [6]
The megaton excavator materials are deposited through the bucket chute. Material can be transferred to a bench conveyor directly or via a discharge boom or mobile conveyor bridge. [6]
Like the BWEs, bucket chain excavators also feature a fixed or rotating superstructure with a counterweight boom that allows the cutting boom a certain degree of verticality. [7] Likewise have a substructure equipped with either a rail or crawler-mounted undercarriage for mobility and transportation. [6] Some BCEs have 'hopping' pontoons similar to those found on walking dragline excavators. [5]
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A dragline excavator is a piece of heavy equipment used in civil engineering and surface mining.
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Surface mining, including strip mining, open-pit mining and mountaintop removal mining, is a broad category of mining in which soil and rock overlying the mineral deposit are removed, in contrast to underground mining, in which the overlying rock is left in place, and the mineral is removed through shafts or tunnels.
Bagger 288, built by the German company Krupp for the energy and mining firm Rheinbraun, is a bucket-wheel excavator or mobile strip mining machine.
A bucket-wheel excavator (BWE) is a large heavy equipment machine used in surface mining.
Big Muskie dragline excavator built by Bucyrus-Erie and owned by the Central Ohio Coal Company, weighing 13,500 short tons (12,200 t) and standing nearly 22 stories tall. It mined coal in the U.S. state of Ohio from 1969 to 1991, and demolished and sold for scrap in 1999.
A landship is a large land vehicle that travels exclusively on land. Its name is meant to distinguish it from vehicles that travel through other mediums such as conventional ships, airships, and spaceships.
A power shovel, also known as a motor shovel, stripping shovel, front shovel, mining shovel or rope shovel, is a bucket-equipped machine usually powered by steam, diesel fuel, gasoline or electricity and used for digging and loading earth or fragmented rock and for mineral extraction. Power shovels are a type of rope/cable excavator, where the digging arm is controlled and powered by winches and steel ropes, rather than hydraulics like in the modern hydraulic excavators. Basic parts of a power shovel include the track system, cabin, cables, rack, stick, boom foot-pin, saddle block, boom, boom point sheaves and bucket. The size of bucket varies from 0.73 to 53 cubic meters.
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A bucket is a specialized container attached to a machine, as compared to a bucket adapted for manual use by a human being. It is a bulk material handling component.
Bagger 293, previously known as the MAN TAKRAF RB293, is a giant bucket-wheel excavator made by the German industrial company TAKRAF, formerly an East German Kombinat.
P&H Mining Equipment sells drilling and material handling machinery under the "P&H" trademark. The firm is an operating subsidiary of Joy Global Inc. In 2017 Joy Global Inc. was acquired by Komatsu Limited of Tokyo, Japan, and is now known as Komatsu Mining Corporation and operates as a subsidiary of Komatsu.
Joy Global Inc. was a company that manufactured and serviced heavy equipment used in the extraction and haulage of coal and minerals in both underground and surface mining. The company had manufacturing facilities in Alabama, Pennsylvania, Texas, Wisconsin, Australia, Canada, China, France, South Africa, Poland and the United Kingdom. In 2017, Joy Global was acquired by Komatsu Limited and was renamed Komatsu Mining Corp.
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Nettle Creek Tin Dredge is a heritage-listed dredge at Nettle Creek, Innot Hot Springs, Tablelands Region, Queensland, Australia. It was built in 1957. It is also known as Barrytown 2 Dredge, Barrytown Gold Dredge, and Battle Creek Tin Dredge. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 22 September 1995.
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Bagger 1473 is a bucket-wheel excavator left abandoned in a field in the municipality of Schipkau in Germany.
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