37. The Aare, the Holcim conveyor, and some power masts

Another view of the Aare from the PSI bridge. The thing spanning the river up ahead is the rock conveyor that belongs to Holcim, the cement plant.

Rock conveyor from Gabenchopf to Holcim Siggenthal

A closer look at the rock conveyor we saw on Friday.

The Gabenchopf quarry is 4 km (2.5 miles) from the plant and is at a higher elevation. The conveyor belt exploits this height difference, and the difference in gravitational potential energy, to power the transport. Holcim claims that this process is "energy-neutral". I suppose numbers are available should one inquire further (or attend the open-house next Saturday).

Source: <http://www.holcim.ch/uploads/CH/Steinbruchflyer.pdf>

100 Jahre Zementi Siggenthal

Yesterday I pointed out a conveyor system to transport rocks to a nearby cement plant. Well, here it is -- a Holcim plant that is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. 

The plant is in Würenlingen, the town across the Aare from Villigen. In fact, the PSI is split across the Aare as well, with half of it in Villigen and the other half in Würenlingen. 

There's an open house at the plant next Saturday. I went to one of these a few years ago and had a lot of fun. If anyone reading this lives in the area and has children, or is simply enthralled by large mechanical objects, I recommend it to them.

The flyer is here:
<http://www.holcim.ch/fileadmin/templates/CH/doc/Events/SG100_PromoFlyerKleinOpt.pdf>

Embracing the fog II

The good thing is that it doesn't stay this way all day. 

That thing on posts in the back? That's a conveyor belt for rocks from a quarry to a cement plant. More on that tomorrow.

Brown cow

Here's a 'typical' Swiss scene. Agriculture and industry side by side, so to speak. In the background is a neighboring village/town called Würenlingen and the Holcim cement factory (click here for other posts mentioning the plant).

I took the photo up in an area near us called Nassberg.

20090516

City daily photo theme day: Lines

Another new month, another theme day. Today's topic is "lines." I took this photo at the Holcim cement factory Open House last month. Related posts at these links:
20080921 Rock quarry in Gabenchopf
20080922 Muldenkipperfahrten!
20080923 Flavors of cement
20080924 Parts in the production of cement
20080925 Targets

Click here to view thumbnails for all theme day participants.

20080920

Targets

The open house wasn't just about cement. No, there were bands playing music, little bistros set up for refreshments and games! At this particular station, people were testing their archery/dart skills.

20080920

Parts in the production of cement

I can't give details on what all the bits here are, but I'd like to mention the fuel that runs this plant. Half of the energy needs of the furnace is met by coal and the other half is made up of a whole mishmash of stuff such as old tires, used solvents, plastics, dried sewage sludge from water treatment plants (remember the ARA post - link - from some time ago?) and, um, animal meal. According to Holcim, the plant uses state of the art technology to scrub the flue gases. One of the components of the filtering system is activated charcoal, which is then itself used as fuel.

20080920

Flavors of cement

The limestone and chunks of clay that are extracted from the quarry seen in the previous two posts are transported to the cement factory in Würenlingen via a 3.8 km (2.4 mile) long conveyor belt (part of which can be seen in this old post) that crosses over Villigen and the river Aare.

There, they are ground into a fine powder and together with some additives such as iron pyrite and bauxite the powder is shoved into a rotary furnace (1450 °C) where it is converted to cement clinker (Wiki). The first time I heard that word it was spoken by an Australian and I will forever carry that sound in my head.

The clinker is cooled in a heat exchanger (and the energy is actually used to heat the plant and about 100 households in the neighborhood) and then ground together with gypsum to form cement.

About 90% of the output of this plant is transported to building sites in cement trucks such as the one seen in the silo tower in the photo. The names on the labels, Normo, Fluvio and Fortico are that of different mixes of cement that Holcim produces.

20080920

Muldenkipperfahrten!

At the quarry from yesterday's post. I suspect this was the main attraction for most of the children: a ride to the pit area on the dump truck. There were a lot of people in the queue and only one truck could be accomodated so the trips were necessarily short. Even so, we had to wait through four loadings before we got our chance on the Muldenkipper. Sadly, I wasn't able to fight my way to a 'window' seat so my view and photographic opportunities were severly restricted.

Holcim has permission to exploit this quarry until 2045. As they complete the extraction from one region of the quarry and move to another area, they reforest the former. There are also a couple of biotopes (rudimentary Wiki entry here) that they've created, to support the amphibians in the area.

20080920

The rock quarry in Gabenchopf

Regular readers will know about the local Holcim cement plant and its rock conveyor belt that crosses Villigen. Yesterday they had an Open House (Tag der offenen Tür) with tours through the factory (Zementfabrik) and to their quarry (Steinbruch) in the hills of Villigen. Limestone and clay, a couple of components of cement, have been extracted from the quarry since 1954.

Explosives are used to break away the stone and there are no more than two controlled explosions per week. They're careful about making sure the vibrations from these don't cause any damage to the houses in the vicinity and they publish weekly reports on their measurements. Link for the curious, in German. The allowed maximum is 6 mm/s for historical buildings while Holcim imposes a stronger restriction of 3 mm/s. According to them, they've never come close to this value. It seems they even have a portable detector available to residents who want to measure the vibrations in their homes.

Here's an aerial view via Google maps (the big splotch on the left half)
Villigen and the Steinbruch

20080920

Putative wheat

As I promised yesterday. I've tried to make the photo clear enough to tell whether it's wheat or not. There's a less clear photo of a field of this butting up against a field of the stuff from yesterday at the overflow site.

In the background is Holcim, the cement plant in Würenlingen across the Aare from Stilli. Clicking on the cement plant label below should bring up the previous posts where I've mentioned it.

20070608

Spring crop with yellow blossoms

This is one view you'll see if you step into the fields as you walk from Stilli to Villigen along Hauptstrasse. The crop seems to be something like broccoli or rapeseed (Raps in German, a variant of which is Canola, a trademarked cultivar developed in Canada in 1978) from which Rapsöl (rapeseed oil) is made. They're both members of the mustard or cabbage family: Brassicaceae. I'll either have to ask someone working in the fields or go over daily to see whether it's broccoli!

If you're wondering about the pipe coming down the slope in the background, that's the conveyor system for rocks for Holcim, the cement plant. (Map)

This post has been edited after the input of some readers.
20070410

Landscape with cement factory

This photo is from last month, though we have had spells of similar weather conditions recently. Yesterday, I talked about ABB, and today I'll mention Holcim, a leading supplier of cement and aggregates in the world. It was established in 1912 in a village near us called Holderbank. We have a plant on the other side of the Aare and the quarry for the rocks it uses is in Villigen's backyard, so to speak. There's a long conveyor system across Villigen and the Aare, a small part of which is visible in this earlier post.

20070121

The Aare from the PSI bridge

The PSI straddles the Aare and this is the view looking to the south from the bridge. The river originates in the Aare glacier in the Bernese alps and it runs 291 km (180 miles) before joining the Rhine in Koblenz, making it the longest river that lies entirely inside Switzerland. Some trivia: the Romans called it Obringa.

In the distance on the right, there's a glimpse of Stilli. The thing spanning the river is a conveyor system that transports rocks from a local quarry to a cement plant on the other side.

20070127 modified