Operation Tuz Gölü.

Salt mining in a Turkish salt lake

Lake Tuz – or Tuz Gölü, which is Turkish for Salt Lake – is one of the most saline lakes in the world with a salt content of 32.9%. 70% of the salt consumed in Turkey comes from here. The lake occupies an area of 1,620 m² and is located in a dry plateau between Ankara, Konya and Akasaray. In winter, the lake’s depth increases by 60 cm to 80 cm, which dissolves part of the salt in the deeper layers and makes the water rich in sodium and chloride. Most of the water evaporates during the summer months, leaving behind an approx. 12 cm layer of salt with a sodium chloride content of 98%. A new layer of salt is thus produced each year.

A dirt layer which forms between the different salt layers poses a big problem for salt mining. Mining methods used in earlier years – peeling or ripping of the salt – were not successful in separating the salt from the dirt layer, resulting in tremendous quality losses. The Turkish mining company decided to use a 2000 DC cold milling machine from Wirtgen to improve the salt quality while increasing production at the same time. Cold milling machines are normally used in road construction but are also ideally suited for mining soft minerals like, for instance, salt. Working at Lake Tuz, the 2000 DC from Wirtgen – which has a maximum milling depth of 320 mm – achieved an annual production of 250,000 tons, mining high-quality salt without or with only minute traces of dirt particles.

Working at a cutting depth of 10 cm and an advance speed of between 15 and 20 m/min, the cold milling machine mined around 2,400 tons of salt per day in two-shift operation. During 3 years of continuous operation at Lake Tuz, the Wirtgen 2000 DC impressed with extremely low wear and tear and not one single machine failure in all that time.