Good climate in Poland's largest copper mine

Founded on 1 May 1961 as Kombinat Gorniczo-Hutniczy-Polska Miedz, KGHM S.A. is today one of the leading international joint stock companies in the mining and processing of valuable metals. Its copper mine, openen in Rudna, Poland, in 1974, is considered the largest and highest-yielding in the Polish copper belt. In 2014, the mine, which employs 4,580 people, was developped into one of the most modern of its kind by M+W Group Polska Warszawa - KGHM invested the equivalent of 140 million Euros and increased the annual ore extraction capacity to approximately 12 million tonnes.

The central component of the investment was the installation of an extraordinarily powerful cooling and ventilation system for the mine shafts located up to 1,250 m below sea level. For this purpose M + W relied on combined heat and power generation and has since been obtaining the electricity needed to operate the cooling system from natural gas. The cooling plant as such impresses with its dimensions : A complex piping system with exceptionally large nominal diameters of 200 mm to 400 mm ventilates and cools the miner's working environment 1,250 m below. The power of the cooling plant: a proud 16 MW.

For the hydronic balancing of the risers among each other, M + W relied on perfect system solutions from Oventrop with the HydroControl VFC/VTR double regulating and commissioning valves. They ensure precise compliance with the calculated volume flow deep in the ground in both the supply and the return.