Innovative approach in moving bulk materials

The goal is to move as much as possible and as cost efficiently as possible, whether this is for large-scale earth-moving, unloading ships or moving overburden. For such jobs, LFT Lüdeke, a family-run business, has invested in a 40-tonne track-mounted machine. The company used to use 30-tonne track excavators, but because the volumes of overburden material have increased over time – the company is now working with two crews – and this has had consequences for the size of the construction machines and their charge weight. To keep operating costs as low as possible, the company chose an innovative option: LFT Lüdeke in Langenhagen near Hanover is using the first Cat Hybrid Excavator 336E H in Northern Germany for its loading jobs.

Essentially the company was looking for a tracked excavator that could load the dumper trucks as efficiently as possible (Fig. 1). What convinced Thomas Lüdeke and his father Dieter Lüdeke, who jointly manage operations as Managing Directors, was the concept on which the hybrid excavator is based. “Many think that the Cat 336E H is an electric hybrid. But that’s incorrect. We’re dealing here with a hydraulic hybrid,” explains Michael Rolf, Sales Manager at the Zeppelin Office in Hanover. Vehicles and construction machines with hybrid technology typically have an additional electric drive. Caterpillar developed a hybrid on hydraulic basis with a pressure accumulator. Instead of the kinetic brake energy of the upper structure being wasted, in the newly developed machine this energy is fed into an accumulator and then used for swing acceleration (Fig. 2). This enables an up to 25 % lower fuel consumption.

Since the hybrid excavator has been in use, it has had to prove its strengths in a variety of different jobs the company has taken on. These include earthwork of all types, ship unloading, loading of trucks as well as deconstruction and the remediation of former industrial sites. But it has most clearly demonstrated its strengths in removing overburden, where it now reaches a daily rate of up to 3000 m³. The target is 300 000 m³ per year and crew. Excavation of the overburden is undertaken by LFT Lüdeke in work for other companies in the raw materials industry, gravel works and quarries. With the hybrid excavator, overburden from a water depth of two metres is cleanly separated from the raw gravel and excavated with a special backhoe. The backhoe cannot capitulate even when handling soil class six.

//www.zeppelin-cat.com" target="_blank" >www.zeppelin-cat.com:www.zeppelin-cat.com

x

Related articles:

Issue 04/2012

70-tonne excavator with high fuel efficiency

A new hydraulic track excavator (Fig.) was recently added to the fleet of machines at the Warstein-based company Westkalk. The house-high, red colossus with a weight of 70 t is used at Suttrop...

more
Issue 03/2019 Caterpillar und Zeppelin

Caterpillar und Zeppelin

A?t bauma 2019, Caterpillar and Zeppelin are going to provide new impulses for innovative construction machine technologies. Around 64 exhibits in all size categories reflect the progress made in...

more
Issue 09/2013

Quarrying with the help of CAT construction machines

Ibbenbüren sandstone is a quartz rock that has been used as a popular building material for many centuries. Typical material properties: it is medium- to coarse-grained, robust and not particularly...

more
Issue 04/2015

Commissioning of overburden system with bucket wheel excavator

Tenova TAKRAF has finished the delivery and erection of an overburden system with bucket wheel excavator for the opencast mine of Zhahanaoer in Inner Mongolia/China (Fig. 1). The system, consisting...

more

Caterpillar und Zeppelin feiern Radlader-Premieren auf der steinexpo

Neuen Technologien, abgestimmt auf die Kies- und Sand- sowie Natursteinindustrie, widmet sich die kommende steinexpo. Dabei geht es im Wesentlichen um die niedrigsten Kosten pro Tonne. Zeppelin und...

more