The YANKUANG Mining (Group) Co., Ltd located in the Shandong province of China has placed a 13 million Euro order for the supply and commissioning of three high capacity winders with SIEMAG GmbH of Netphen, Germany. The winders are for the new ZHAOLOU mine complex currently under construction where two of the machines will service the production shaft, each having two skips in balance. The third will be configured as a double cage winder for the service shaft.

Each of the Production Hoists will have a design capacity of 650 tonnes per hour of raw coal and comprise a ground mounted 4-rope Koepe winder with a drum diameter of 4650 mm, hoisting a 22 t payload at a speed of 13.9 m/s from a depth of 896 metres. With this installation the ZHAOLOU mine will be able to produce and hoist 6 million tonnes of raw coal per year.

The Service Winder of the same size will be capable of transporting loads up to 25 t. All three machines will be equipped with hydraulically operated disk brake systems using the reliable, field proven BE 100 brake units. A fully closed loop electro-hydraulic control system will ensure that the load is safely brought to rest at a controlled rate of retardation during emergency brake application for all load, speed and direction of travel combinations.

The automatic control system of the winders will utilise S7-400 processors with inbuilt redundancy. Each machine will be direct driven by a 4000 kW synchronous AC motor coupled to a Simovert ML2 DC voltage link regenerative converter using IGCT (Integrated Gate Commutated Thyristor) power semiconductors with Active Front End and motor side power inverter. The advanced vector and pulse control technique optimise the IGCT switching to achieve the highest quality torque with synchronous hoisting machines. This new technology is particularly suited to remote mining locations with limited electrical power capacity in that reactive power and harmonics are virtually eliminated whilst achieving excellent efficiency and accurate control. The electrics will be supplied by Siemens AG, Erlangen

In addition to the Winders, SIEMAG will be supplying the 6 sets of 4-rope head sheaves and the hoisting ropes for this installation.

Design meetings in Germany and China will not only ensure that the clients requirements are met but that a high quality world class installation will result. SIEMAG’s scope also includes the supervision of installation, commissioning and testing and very importantly the training of the customer’s personnel.

The service winder is scheduled to be delivered within 10 months and the production winders 2 months later. Installation and commissioning will commence in the later part of 2006 and be completed in early 2007.

The decision to place the order with SIEMAG was significantly influenced by the large number of reference plants already installed by SIEMAG in China coupled with their well known operational safety record and stringent design basis in accordance with German Mining Regulations. The additional factors of high availability and proven reliability also assisted as did SIEMAG’s commitment to a short delivery period.

Similar winders with the same drive technology have been delivered to the TUNLIU Mine of the Luan Coal Mining Group in Shanxi province and will soon be commissioned.