MINE HOISTS
a six-rope Koepe winding machine for the
production shaft. Both winding machines had
been designed, manufactured, installed and
finally successfully commissioned at SIEMAG
TECBERG in previous years in accordance with
system-specific requirements. With a drive
output of 2 x 5,500 kW the production winding
machine can fetch up to 55 t of material from a
depth of 1,100 m at a running speed of over 18 m/s.
Moving on to Belarus, Thyssen Schachtbau
has also signed a contract to make hoisting
plants for IOOO Slavkaliy, the press service of the
Belarussian company told news agency
BelTArecently. IOOO Slavkaliy is busy building
the Nezhinsky mining and processing factory,
which will require four hoisting plants. One of
them will be used to lift people and cargoes in
the cage shaft. Another one will be used as a
backup. The other two will be installed in the skip
shaft to extract the ore. The hoisting machines will
be delivered to the construction site to be
assembled on site. The first shipment is supposed
to be delivered in mid-2020. The project is again
being handled by Thyssen subsidiary OLKO-
Maschinentechnik and as at Woodsmith, the
electricals are being supplied by Siemens.
ABB on potash friction hoists in
Canada
Since potash mining in Canada began in the
province of Saskatchewan in the early 1960s,
friction hoists have been
the preferred method of
moving ore to the surface
due to their high
capacities, optimal motor
power and suitability for
single-level hoisting.
ABB told IM: Recent
market conditions have
led to the large-scale
expansion of Canadian
potash mines and friction
hoist technology has
evolved in response.
Payloads capacities now range from 34.5-65 t,
while some high-capacity hoists now employ
over 15 MW of electrical motor power.
The majority of new friction hoists are driven
by an AC alternating current electrical powertrain
using a voltage source convertor (VSC) drive
system and an AC synchronous motor. The VSC
for mine hoists use a four-quadrant drive system
which acts as a motor when lifting a payload and
in some cases also regenerates power back onto
the network.
“Modern voltage-source convertor drive
systems are purely static components, so
essentially there are no moving parts,” explains
Tim Gartner, Global Product Manager, Mine Hoist
Electrical at technology leader ABB.
“These systems don’t consume reactive power,
ABB’s high capacity direct coupled friction hoist,
typical of those use in Canadian potash mines
thereby raising the network power factor to 1.0,
and do not generate significant harmonics. So, in
the majority of cases these drives can be
installed in any electrical network without
negatively impacting power quality."
In 2010, Potash Corp – now called Nutrien
following its merger in 2018 with Calgary-based
Agrium – approached ABB and an EPC consulting
firm to design a new hoisting system that would
maximise production from its Allan mine.
Pushing the boundaries in terms of what was
possible in friction hoisting at that time, ABB
installed a groundbreaking, ground-mounted 45 t
capacity machine, which, boasting a hoisting
To achieve
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