CONVEYOR TECHNOLOGY
Voith developed BeltGenius ERIC to help mines monitor , benchmark and optimise all their belt conveyors and conveying systems
As mines increase their use of conveyors to reduce diesel haulage , Paul Moore focuses on technologies that have been developed to monitor , maintain and repair the belts & associated infrastructure plus additional sensors to analyse the bulk materials travelling on them
Confidence in conveyors
Mines are investing in conveyors like never before due to the huge potential reduction in carbon footprint , especially combined with the use of renewable power . And conveyors themselves have increased in efficiency and capability with stronger and more durable belts , and more powerful drive systems , including gearless systems on the largest conveyor flights . But like large grinding mills , conveyors also represent an operational risk in that if they go down for any reason then the whole mine throughput is potentially affected , unlike a large truck fleet where one truck going out of service can be managed . So today , the management of conveyor maintenance and uptime is paramount .
Continental has developed a service solution for monitoring conveyor belt systems to permit early identification of weak points along a belt conveyor system before damage resulting in unscheduled and cost-intensive downtimes occurs . The new , technology-based approach , which was developed to the prototype stage in the Incubator program of Co-pace , the company ’ s own startup organisation , offers a combination of visual and acoustic inspection and also permits the efficient , dataassisted planning of maintenance intervals ; it replaces the conventional and usually very laborious manual process with sensor-based technologies that permit a more precise inspection process , reduce the verification input and enable predictive maintenance .
Idlers are important components of a belt conveyor and are essential in ensuring smooth conveying operations . A conveyor belt on a mediumsized conveyor with a belt length of 40 km in total runs over some 120,000 idlers . Around 30 % of the operational faults with belt conveyors are attributable to defects with idlers that it was not
possible to identify in a timely manner . “ The new service offering is in response to this fact . It comprises a hybrid solution that addresses different applications and sections . On the one hand , inspection of open sections and operations is carried out from the air using a drone equipped with infrared and RGB cameras that monitors both sides of the belt conveyor . As soon as the drone has flown over the section under inspection , it returns to an autonomous charging station in order to upload the data collected to the relevant cloud via an IoT ( Internet of Things ) module during the charging process . The image data is processed with the aid of an AI-assisted ( artificial intelligence ) algorithm and analysed with reference to any detected idler defects .”
Continuous maintenance in covered sections or underground conveyors , on the other hand , is carried out using fixed microphones installed every
20 to 25 m that capture frequency variations in the numerous idlers . The audio recording is conducted twice a day , with the data being uploaded to the cloud specified above . Events that indicate a damaged idler are then investigated using an AIbased algorithm .
“ Conventional and often manual inspection methods can be very time-consuming , imprecise or even dangerous for service technicians because of the belt length or local circumstances such as underground routing and enclosed sections . Documentation is also often performed manually , with reports having to be manually input subsequently into the relevant datasets . Maintenance intervals also frequently follow a fixed rotational principle , meaning that measures required on short notice to avoid or prevent conveyor failures cannot be carried out in a timely manner ,” explains
A drone inspects the conveyor belt system on open sections using RGB and infrared cameras , part of Continental ' s new service solution for monitoring conveyor belt systems
38 International Mining | FEBRUARY 2021