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ABB : Pioneering Gearless Mill Drive Technology
Two gearless mill drives at Esperanza copper mine in Chile
ABB has always been the front runner in only 42 ft SAG mill . Today , ABB has sold twenty Gearless Mill Drive ( GMD ) technology , a GMDs for 40 ft SAG mills , some of which have unique mill drive concept , eliminating all been running for more than a decade . The story mechanical transmission parts by mounting the continues , as the main mill suppliers and ABB are rotor poles directly onto the mill shell and working together on even larger mills : 44 ft SAG mills wrapping the stator around it . The GMD provides and 32 ft ball mills with around 34 MW installed the highest possible power rating combined with power . the inherent variable speed capability , which
When it comes to new installations , if mill opens the door to a variety of flexible operational availability and efficiency are truly of paramount options to maintain energy-efficient grinding importance , then the GMD comes automatically during fluctuating feed conditions . into the spotlight : availabilities higher than 99 %,
ABB started its GMD story in 1969 with the including regular GMD maintenance , and drive commissioning of the world ’ s first GMD ( 6.4 MW ) efficiencies of over 95 % are achieved . This is for a 16 ft ( 4.9 m ) diameter cement mill , which is accomplished , primarily , because the GMD has still running today . Over the last five decades , eliminated all mechanical transmission larger deposits with increasingly lower grades components such as ring gear , pinion and have led to advances in mill technology and larger gearbox : what is not there cannot fail or suffer diameter mills – all corresponding to higher losses . installed power ratings . Furthermore , this high availability is possible
About 15 years ago , ABB was the first to because the GMD is comprehensively monitored . manufacture a 28 MW GMD for a 40 ft SAG mill More than 15 years ago , ABB pioneered GMD and , later , another GMD for the world ’ s first and remote monitoring . Another impressive milestone is the paper ‘ ABB Ability™ – Digitalization of Predictive Maintenance for Grinding ’ ( SAG Conference 2019 , Vancouver ), presenting the concept of automatically pushing GMD signals into the cloud instead of logging in remotely . At last year ’ s SAG conference , ABB demonstrated further progress with the paper ’ Remote Mill Monitorization : A Solution for Higher Efficiency and Asset Optimization ’.
Today , sophisticated algorithms analyse the enormous amount of data generated continuously by the large installed fleet of ABB GMDs , looking for unusual trends that could provide early warnings of possible anomalies . As Zurich Insurances and ABB described in their joint paper , ‘ Insurability of large gearless mill drives ’ ( SAG conference 2011 , Vancouver ), the target is to prevent any unscheduled mill shutdown .
Today ABB is bringing its GMD Transient Recorder to the next level . In the exceptional event of a GMD trip , the high-resolution Transient Recorder records a large predefined set of signals in a short timeframe from several seconds before until a few seconds after the trip . This information assists in troubleshooting to find the root cause and , if necessary , take countermeasures to prevent similar trips .
However , while the pressure is high due to the unscheduled mill shutdown , the end user engineer either needs to download the large Transient Recorder dataset and send it to ABB for analysis , or the ABB engineer logs in remotely to access the data . In both cases this may result in additional delay before starting the actual troubleshooting ; the GMD rarely trips and , therefore , the end user engineer typically does not have experience in downloading the Transient Recorder data , while on the other hand it may be challenging to establish the direct remote access due to on-site IT restrictions and modifications .
ABB , therefore , developed the next level Transient Recorder , which , in case of a trip , pushes the data automatically into the cloud and the ABB engineer ( or an end user ’ s GMD expert ) can access it conveniently from anywhere in the world and start troubleshooting immediately .
The story doesn ’ t end here , ABB will continue writing new chapters of this fascinating story .
Find out more about this story , by accessing this information here : https :// new . abb . com / mining / grinding / gearless -mill-drives.
Transient Recorder Sample
Maarten van de Vijfeijken Product Marketing Manager Grinding Business Line GMD | ABB maarten . van-de-vijfeijken @ ch . abb . com
MAY 2024 | International Mining 29