Global technology company ABB says it has helped Atalaya Mining to optimise mill availability and performance by combining its gearless mill drive (GMD) with ongoing lifecycle management support and a digital condition monitoring solution through a long-term service agreement (LTSA). The mining company, which produces copper concentrates and silver by-product at its Project Riotinto site in the Andalucía region of southwest Spain, uses an ABB GMD, which ABB says is the most powerful mill drive system on the market. “It is considered as the ‘workhorse’ for grinding operations, providing reliability and availability for processing plants such as Riotinto, which has a processing capacity of up to 15 Mt/y.”
After its recent expansion, Riotinto mine increased its annual copper production target to approximately 55,000 t per year. The ABB long-term service agreement (LTSA) with an ABB Lifecycle Manager has supported a production record at the mine in 2020 and production was approximately the same in 2021. Through the service program, Atalaya Mining benefits from lifecycle management to plan, coordinate and execute services, including corrective, preventive and predictive system maintenance with rapid response to emergency calls and an adaptive approach to meet modifications in production, maintenance or shutdown schedules. This means minimising the risk of costly unscheduled downtime, extending the life of installed systems and optimising process performance.
At the same time, ABB Ability Predictive Maintenance for grinding, a digital condition monitoring solution to maintain, assess and analyse GMD systems and increase safety through continuous checks, has been deployed. It considers past and real-time data to anticipate maintenance requirements and to avoid unplanned production downtime. Overall, the LTSA maximises availability, optimises asset performance and facilitates safe operation of the equipment through a single-point-of-contact, ABB’s Remote Diagnostic Services, routine maintenance and upgrades.
“The combination of ABB GMD design, the continuous monitoring and the use of ABB Ability™ Predictive Maintenance for grinding means that the system is working at its highest efficiency,” said Dimitris Fotiadis, Head of Lifecycle Care, ABB. “ABB will continue to support Atalaya Mining through machine operation and routine maintenance over the long term.”
ABB has provided more than 150 gearless mill drives to customers around the world over the last 50 years. ABB gearless mill drives draw on the ABB distributed control system, ABB Ability™ System 800xA and offer advanced mill control functions including frozen charge detection, frozen charge remover, controlled rollback, automatic positioning and advanced monitoring.
