UNDERGROUND MINING RAIL
Maschinenfabrik GmbH have been transferred to
NMT’s Schalke Locomotives GmbH, where NMT
says they will continue to work with SCHALKE’s
legacy and reputation for quality workmanship in
the locomotives they engineer and sell.
Anglo Platinum pushing the
boundaries with LOHC technology
ModuTrac is a trademark and stands for
“modular traction systems.” It means that
SCHALKE’s technology, now part of NMT,
allows operators to exchange the power
sources of locomotives in a very short time,
such as from diesel to battery
enable NMT to combine German and Canadian
innovation to the mining industry and expand its
market to industrial and urban transportation.”
“We have been integrating our equipment with
Schalker Eisenhütte Maschinenfabrik GmbH
since 2012, on projects from Sweden to
Indonesia, and have been the North American
representative for them since 2014. Acquiring
SCHALKE assets will enhance NMT’s ability to
provide a ‘one stop shop’ to our customers for
reliable, continuous, automated rail haulage
systems,” Richard DeRuiter, Vice President –
Business Development, NMT said at the time. In
addition to the assets acquired, many of the
employees of Schalker Eisenhütte
Back in 2011, a collaboration between Vehicle
Projects, Trident South Africa, and Battery
Electric was announced, which led to fuel cell
locomotives being built and operated at Anglo
American Platinum’s mines. The fuel cell powered
locomotive presented in 2011 was based on
metal hydrate technology. Anglo had two
locomotives that ran for a year – half of this
period in full production – at Amandelbult mine.
Anglo told IM that there were several
shortcomings with the technology, related to
heat and inefficient gas generation, which was
unacceptable for underground application. “The
metal hydrate technology did work, but the
vibration and weight of the product, as well as
the time it took to refuel, motivated development
of a safer alternative that was quicker to refuel.”
In 2014 Anglo moved to liquid organic
hydrogen carrier (LOHC) technology, a fuel liquid
technology that is much safer to use at
atmospheric pressure. “It is an oil product that is
loaded with hydrogen, which is then released
through a reactor from the oil before it enters the
fuel cell. In short, it is a battery extender – the