Downwardly conveying conveyor installation

A downwardly conveying conveyor installation, comprising:

• a circulating web-like, chain-like or circular conveyor for receiving conveyable articles and transporting the conveyable articles along a conveying path from a geodetically higher location to a geodetically lower location;
• a motor drive which causes the conveyor to circulate;
• a hydrodynamic coupling connected between the motor drive and conveyor comprising a drive-side pump wheel and an output-side turbine wheel, which together form a toroidal operating space which is filled, or can be filled, with operating medium;
• the pump wheel and the turbine wheel each having a blade arrangement with a multiplicity of blades which are arranged opposite one another such that the blades of the pump wheel are flush with the blades of the turbine wheel;
• the blades of the pump wheel, as seen in a circumferentially directed section through the operating space, are positioned obliquely, in the direction from a rotor base to the blade tip, counter to the driving direction of rotation of the pump wheel, and the blades of the turbine wheel are positioned obliquely, in the direction from a rotor base to the blade tip, in the driving direction of rotation of the turbine wheel;
• wherein the conveyor installation exhibits a first generator operating state with a conveyor loaded with conveyable articles in which, by virtue of its mass and the mass of the conveyable articles loaded thereupon, the turbine wheel circulates more rapidly through a weight force conditioned self-drive of the conveyor than the pump wheel and a second motor operating state with the conveyor being unloaded or to a great extent unloaded, in which state the pump wheel circulates more rapidly than the turbine wheel by virtue of the drive by the motor drive.