10 Years of Successful Cooperation--Innovative Coarse Ore Conveyor System in Chilean Copper Mine

摘要

The Los Pelambres copper mine is situated around 200 km to the north of Santiago at an altitude of 3200 meters above sea level. The concentrator is located at 1600 meters altitude to avoid stress associated with working at 3200 meters for the personnel of the concentrator as well as reduce the requirements on the equipment of the benefication plant and to protect it from risks of rock and snow avalanches. Therefore, a reliable and highly efficient solution was needed for the transportation to the concentrator. Due to the steep decline and the particularly challenging conditions like dust, moisture, vibration and large temperature fluctuations, all components are exposed to considerable stress, which had to be considered during the design. The drive and automation solution designed and provided by Siemens was to install a 12,7 km long downhill conveyor belt system to connect the primary crusher with the concentrator, which even generates up to 19 MW of energy. The conveyor was designed to move a maximum of 8700 t/h of bulk material and transports the copper ore on a 1.8 m wide belt at a speed of 6 m/s. Initially, there were 8 three-phase squirrel cage motors with a rated power of 2.5 MW each, fed from Simovert" ML medium-voltage converters at the heart of the drives.