Plant Equipment and Hire September 2019 | Page 28

TECHNOLOGY DISTRIBUTING OPTIMUM LOADS Compiled by Tarren Bolton New plug-and-play controller extends Siemens mining portfolio. S iemens is extending the Simine portfolio for high-pressure grinding mills (HPGR) to include a new controller; its plug-and-play functionality makes the load share controller available for immediate use. The web-server based operator interface allows the process engineer at any time (online and off-line) to adapt the controller parameters and therefore optimise the torque distribution. The 26 SEPTEMBER 2019 controller is already being successfully used by one customer. The new load share controller follows established control scheme. During start of the HPGR the Load Share Controller is inactive. When a certain torque level has been reached the controller takes over load share control already during mill start. If the controller is not ready for use, for example, in the event of disruption, the drives do not start. However, operation without load sharing is available. In this case the drives take the speed reference from the mill automation. Variable load distribution The load distribution between the rollers in an HPGM is generally 50:50. The master follows the speed command and the slave follows the torque of the master. If an alternative load distribution www.equipmentandhire.co.za