THE Siemens Industrial Solutions and Services Group (I&S) has received an order from CITIC Heavy Machinery, Luoyang, to supply gearless drive systems for five 40-foot autogenous grinding mills.
The systems from Siemens each have an output of 28 MW and are therefore the most powerful mill drives that are commercially available.
The AG mills are intended for use in Australia in "Sino Iron", one of the largest open-cast iron-ore mining projects in the world.
The order is worth around 60 million euros and the ore mills are scheduled to start operating successively in the course of 2009.
The Sino Iron project in the Pillbara region of west Australia is being developed by CITIC Pacific (Hong Kong) Co. Ltd in collaboration with Chinese steel producers such as Wuhan Iron & Steel Corporation, Tangshan Iron & Steel Corp, and Handan Iron & Steel Corporation.
The China Metallurgical Group Corp (MCC) is responsible for the construction work.
The mine is to start production in 2009 and, after completion in 2010, will have a capacity of 24 million metric tons of concentrate, making it one of the largest open-cast iron-ore mines in the world.
Five 40-foot AG (autogenous grinding) mills will be used for grinding the ore.
For the ore mills, Siemens is supplying the gearless drives, each with an output of 28 MW.
These systems are the most powerful mill drives available on the market. Moreover, gearless drives are more efficient than geared motors.
The Siemens drives therefore have the lowest energy consumption in their class.
Compared to conventional solutions, the costs of material and maintenance for drives without gears and a coupling are also substantially lower.
Moreover, longer service intervals reduce maintenance costs additionally while increasing the availability of the installation as a whole.
At the same time, speed variability and transvector control ensure that the operating point of the motor can be exactly matched to different requirements such as when materials of different degrees of hardness have to be processed or if different operating modes prove to be necessary for a particular purpose.
Siemens Industrial Solutions and Services Group (I&S)
metals-mining@siemens.com
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