Marble quarries

Marble quarries:
Marble is a metamorphic rock resulting from the recrystallization of limestone. Heat and pressure over time cause the carbonate minerals to recrystallize into an interlocking mosaic of crystals, the different colours due to the various mineral impurities such as clay, silt and sand.
One of the biggest marble quarries in the world is found in Carrara in Italy. This little town is famous for it's marble quarries in the nearby mountains. Carrara marble has been used since the time of Ancient Rome; the Pantheon and Trajan's Column in Rome are constructed of it, and many sculptures of the Renaissance, such as Michelangelo's David, were carved from Carrara marble. There are a lot of seperate quarries which together form an impressive landscape:








Another region with huge quarries is the Evora province in Portugal. Here near the village of Estremoz for example a very deep marble quarry is situated:


Further to the South East the The Rosa Portugal marble quarries are situated. This is the biggest marble production area in the world. There are at least 50 marble quarries in this area of this type:


In Rajasthan near the town of Makrana in India another huge Marble production "centre" is located. Around this town 500 marble quarries can be found. These marble quarries have an elongated shape. And if you would count them as one then the quarries stretch for 12.5 kilometers at certain points. For example here the quarries begin in the Northern part of Makrana and they end here 12.5 kilometers to the south. The world famous monument The Taj Mahal was made of marble coming from these quarries:

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Bauxite mines

Bauxite mines:
Bauxite is used to make aluminium. First the Alumina is refined from Buaxite in an alumina refinery After the Alumina is refined from bauxite the aluminium is extracted from its oxide alumina in an aluminium smelter.

The biggest Bauxite mine is the Huntly mine located near Dwellingup in Australia. Huntly bauxite production has doubled since 1990 and currently produces around 23 million tonnes of bauxite per year. This mine is supplying bauxite ore to Pinjarra and Kwinana Refineries. To transport the Bauxite to the refinery it uses an overland convejor of more then 20 km in length:




At the end of the lines the Bauxite is stored at the refinery bauxite storage side. An even longer conveyor belt is going from this Bauxite mine to the bauxite refinery in Worsley. It is fifthy two kilometers long and is the longest conveyor belt in the world. The worlds second biggest bauxite mine is located near the town of Trombetas in Brazil. This mine transports the bauxite to the nearby bauxite bulk terminal:

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Athabasca Oil Sands

Athabasca Oil Sands:
Oil sands, tar sands, or extra heavy oil is a type of bitumen deposit. The sands are naturally occurring mixtures of sand or clay, water and an extremely dense and viscous form of petroleum called bitumen. They are found in large amounts in many countries throughout the world, but are found in extremely large quantities in Canada and Venezuela. Because extra-heavy oil and bitumen flow very slowly, if at all, toward producing wells under normal reservoir conditions, the sands must be extracted by strip mining or the oil made to flow into wells by in situ techniques which reduce the viscosity by injecting steam, solvents, and/or hot air into the sands. These processes can use more water and require larger amounts of energy than conventional oil extraction.

At the present time, only Canada has a large-scale commercial oil sands industry, though a small amount of oil from oil sands is produced in Venezuela. The biggest oil sand operation in the world is taking place north of Fort McMarray in Alberta, Canada. These oil sands are called the Athabasca oil sands. There are three big mines in the Athabasca oil sand project which together form the biggest mining site in the world: The Syncrude mine serving the Syncrude oil refinery:









The Suncor mine, serving the Suncor oil refinery:





and the Albian sands, 15km north of the Syncrude mine.

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Granite quarries

Biggest granite quarries:
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. It is mined in so called granite quarries. The biggest granite quarry in the world and also the most spectacular looking is located in Graniteville in the sate of Vermont in the USA:






The world's largest open faced granite mine is found in Mount Airy in North Carolina in the United States:


Also in the U.S this grenite mine near Norcross in Georgia is located. It is also considered one of the largest granite quarries in the world in terms of output:

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Diamond mines

Largest Diamond mines:

The richest mine in the world is found in Jwaneng in Botswana about 100 miles west of the city of Gaborono. It is the richest diamond mine in the world when measured by value of recovered diamonds:

When measured by the volume of the diamond production the Argyle diamond mine in the Kimberley region in Western Australia is the biggest. Due to the low proportion of gem-quality diamonds, is not the leader by value:



South Africa's Venetia Diamond Mine located in Limpopo Province, in north-easter South Africa is the third largest in the world. The Venetia diamond mineproduces over 40% of the world's gem-quality diamonds:


The Catoca diamond mine is the fourth largest diamond mine in the world, and is located in Northern Angola:



A very spectacular diamond mine is located in Mirny in Russia. This mine was one of the biggest in the world but is not in production anymore since 2004. The mine is 525 m deep and has a diameter of 1,200 m:




Another special diamond mine is the Diavik diamond mine located 300 kilometers northeast of Yellowknife, capital of Canada’s Northwest Territories. This mine is situated in a very remote area often totally frozen and very hard to reach. It also has it own airport to serve the mine:


In the winter the mine is hard to reach due to snowfall and ice:

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Germany's coal mines

Germany's coal mines:
Germany is a country which always depended highly on coal for producing elektricity. Most of all because Germany had huge coal fields especially in the province of Nordrein Westfalen, and East Germany near the border with Poland. In the last 20 years this dependence of coal highly reduced but Germany still has very impressive coal fields left with most of the time huge coal power plants next to it. This wasteland for example is the Boxberg coal mine in East germany:


The impressive 1200 MW coal power plant is standing next to it:




Further north west of the Boxberg coal mine is the mine of Welzow Sud. One of the biggest coal mines in Europe. In this mine in East Germany that is now closed you can even see an F60 excavator which is the biggest movable tool in the world:


A very impressive mine in East Germany is the coal mine near Breisnig. This coal field stretches for almost 6 kilometers:



The giant F60 excavators can be seen at work here:


Most of the coal mined here is going to the Powerplant of Janschwalde not far from the mine:


In west germany even bigger coal mines can be found. This coal mine near Garzweiler has 3 huge cole power plants near it. The closest to the mine is the The coal power plant near Frimmersdorf:


Not far from here the coal power plant of Neurath can be found:

And the power plant of Niederausem is close to the mine either: All of these coal power plants depend highly on the coal mined from the Garzweiler mine.

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Open pit coal mines

Coal mining:
Coal mining is the extraction or removal of coal from the earth by mining. When coal is used for fuel in power generation it is referred to as steaming or thermal coal. Coal that is used to create coke for steel manufacturing is referred to as coking or metallurgical coal. There are two basic methods of mining a coal reserve: surface mining and deep underground mining. The choice of mining method depends primarily on depth of burial and thickness of the coal seam. Seams relatively close to the surface, at depths less than approximately 180 feet (55 m), are usually surface mined. Coal is mined commercially in over 50 countries. Over 7,036 Mt/yr of hard coal is currently produced, a substantial increase over the past 25 years. The world coal deposits are seen in the picture below:


Most of the open pit coal mines are found in the black areas in the map above. The biggest open pit coal mine is the Correjon coal mine near Hato Nuevo In columbia. The output of the mine in 2004 was 24.9 million tons (compared to total global hard coal production of 4,600 million tons). Cerrejón contributes about half of Colombia's coal exports of 52 million tons, with Colombia ranked sixth among major coal exporting nations. The deepest and largest open coal mine in Europe and second largest in the world is the Korkinsk open pit coal mine in Russia. Miles of rails, hundreds of electro trains and giant excavators work in this place.


Not very far from this mine is the 3rd largest coal mine in Kazachstan near Ekibastuz.
All of the Ekibastuz pits were developed for the sole purpose of supplying coal to the Urals and Siberia and with a view to burning it in Kazakhstan to supply electric power to Russia.





Another mine which is also considered one of the biggest in the world is the Hambach mine in West Germany. The hambach mine near the village of Hambach is the biggest Lignite coal mine in Germany. Lignite, often referred to as brown coal, or Rosebud coal by Northern Pacific Railroad, is the lowest rank of coal and used almost exclusively as fuel for steam-electric power generation. It is brownish-black and has a high inherent moisture content, sometimes as high as 66%, and very high ash (50%) content compared with bituminous coal. It is also a heterogeneous mixture of compounds for which no single structural formula will suffice. To uncover the 2.4 billion tons of brown coal (lignite) found at Hambach, five years were required to remove a 200-m-thick layer of waste sand and to redeposit it off site. The mine currently yields 30 million tons of lignite annually, with annual capacity scheduled to increase to 40 million tons in coming years. The Mine area is over 100 square miles of which 60 are being or have been mined.


Proven reserves will be mined out by 2040 and the resulting crater will be turned into Europe’s 2nd largest lak. The mine also Operates 7 Bucket Wheel Excavators which stands 310 feet tall and are 700 feet long:


Open pit coal mines which also belong to the worlds biggest are: The Black thunder coal mine in Wright in the USA, The Belchatow coal mine in Poland near Belchatow, and the open pit coal mine of Fushun in China.

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