New electrical equipment to modernise excavator will remove up to 6,600 m3/h of overburden. ABB recently won the order from TAKRAF to deliver the complete electrical equipment for a bucketwheel excavator. The excavator is set to operate from October 2013 in the new Zhahanaoer coal open-pit mining site in Inner Mongolia, China. It is the largest bucketwheel excavator to be used in China to date.
The Zhahanaoer open-pit mining site covers an area of around 31 km2 and contains an estimated 828 Mt of steam coal. The coal will be extracted from deep layers ranging from 85 to 356 m. The frequency-controlled bucketwheel drive delivering 1,250 kW will in future allow the bucketwheel excavator to remove up to 6,600 m3/h of overburden.
ABB is carrying out a turnkey project comprising the engineering, delivery, assembly and commissioning of the electrical equipment for the excavator. This will include the medium-voltage switchgear (6.3 kV), the 400V and 660V low-voltage switchgear, motors, transformers and the ACS800 drives. In addition, ABB is supplying the control system based on the Compact 800 product series including AC800M controllers, appropriate Chinese visualization and the lighting and air-conditioning equipment.