The performance of excavators in the overburden of south- west sibovc field in Kosovo

Kosovo has significant reserves of coal, where their exploitation began in 1922, coal is a
mixture of organic mineral material produced by a natural process of growth and decay,
or an accumulation of debris both vegetal and mineral with some sorting and
stratification. Based on the geological map, the Kosovo Basin is mainly a tectonic area
filled with tertiary sediments. Old rocks represent the Basin area, in the west Paleozoic
age and in the east by Upper Cretaceous sediments. In the Coal Basin of Kosovo, along
with Tertiary sediments, Quaternary sediments that have a hydrogeological character are
developed.
Currently coal is dug in the field of the new mine known as South-West Sibovc, which
includes reserves of 123.4 million tons.
The first stage for the exploitation of coal mines is the removal of the overburden, so
through the evaluation of the performance of the excavators, productivity can be
improved, costs reduced and safety increased in the workplace. The evaluation of the
excavators performance was carried out through the analysis of the reports for years 2019,
2020 and 2021, from which it appears that there was not a good utilization of the capacity
of the five excavators that were analyzed: 2xSchRs 650, 2xSRs 1300.24 and SRs 470,
based on reports the productivity for excavator SchRs 650 is between 74.5% to 113.1%,
for excavator SRs 1300 is between 62.86% to 96.39% and for excavator SRs 470 is
between 49.84% to 73.95%, but load coefficient is between 18% –38%. The normal
utilization of the load factor for these excavators is from 45%–60%.
Good productivity analysis can identify areas that need improvement, and through
improving the processes and work arrangements of excavators can lead to increased mine
performance, reducing costs and increasing revenues.
Keywords: Excavators, productivity, performance, overburden, ratio