MechChem Africa November-December 2024

⎪ Maintenance and asset management ⎪

Left: Using data from the electrical systems of the drive pulley motor in AI-based algorithms, the Tru-Trac Rip Prevent+ system can detect the probability of a rip event on any conveyor belt type, enabling operators to intervene before the rip occurs. Right: Rip Prevent+ system was unveiled at Electra Mining Africa, by Tru-Trac.

Hausknecht. “Continuously running in the background is an AI-based algorithm that is looking for specific patterns. When a rock is stuck in the loading area, for example the al gorithm gives us signal that we now know is associated with the beginning of a rip event. This signal was present 24-hours before a rip occurred at a customer in Germany called RPBL. The customer ignored this signal, and they didn't check the conveyor lights. 24 hours later, the belt ripped and the Rip Prevent+ System stopped the conveyor that then had a rip length of just 12 m,” he relates. In another case during the development phase, according to Schiller, a rock was stuck in the chute of the loading area. “In that case the specific patterns was visible in the data four hours before a problem was noticed. But if the customer is not check ing the system for ‘unhealthy’ warnings, then the belt will rip. Now, with our system properly integrated into the belt drive, we are able to automatically stop the conveyor line within 0.2 seconds of detecting a block age, thus preventing the occurrence or a rip and significantly reducing the associated downtime,” he explains. Simon Hausknecht cites a success story for this system on a mine in Australia. “Northern Star Resources is a huge gold mine with five Rip Prevent+ Systems running. 24 hours after having installed Rip Prevent+ on these conveyors, we picked up an event and it stopped the belt immediately. The belt was stopped before any major damage was done and the problem was im mediately resolved. The value of the system was proven by that one incident and this mine is now a very happy customer,” he re-

lates. In terms of costs, traditional belt mon itoring technologies rely on a steel-cored belt, which need a bottom cover of at least 6.0 mm to cover the inductive loop of the belt. This makes the solution very much more expensive. “Our system is suitable for any belt, corded, uncorded or fabric corded, and we only charge for the license and a small amount for the hardware and commissioning,” he adds. Related benefits “While we have started with rip prevention, we are open minded and very excited by a host of other opportunities that the system offers. If a customer has a monitoring need, we invite them to come to us. We will look at the requirements and develop a solutions free of charge, because we believe that, if one site has a problem then that solution will also be useful at other facilities all over the world,” suggests Schiller. “We know for example, that we can use our current system, without modification, to track energy consumptions, the motor condition, the energy efficiency, and the tonnage per hour. We have dashboards for energy efficiency, costs per ton, unproduc tive uptime, and we can measure tonnage across the belt in most cases, to within 2.5% of a belt scale,” he says, adding that in a gravel pit in Austria where the system is operating, SHG is achieving a deviation of just 0.5% compared to the calibrated belt weighing scale. “We are also using the system to check the external electrical network, because poor quality power from the grid can result in drastic problems for electrical motors – high THD values, for example increased the fire risks for electrical components, and

PLCs can be shut down due to these dis turbances,” he says. SHG plans to develop the system more and more, with gearbox monitoring already under development, for example. “We want to bring everything together to help customers identify root cause incidents in all of their critical plant equipment, because analysing data 24/7 at high speed can result in huge customer benefits in terms of incident prevention and uptime,” adds Hausknecht. In another contrast to the modern trend, he says that SHG’s AI-based monitoring system is an offline system that does not depend on The Cloud or an Internet connec tion. “We believe Cloud-based monitoring is the wrong approach for machine level in tervention. IT Security is the most important part and therefore it is necessary to stay offline on the machinery level. “SHG currently has more than 120 Rip Prevent+ systems in operation, and boasts a 100% rip event prevention record, having already detected and prevented 10 belts from ripping on the sites it is servicing. “The Rip Prevent+ system is available to customers across Africa from Tru-Trac, and significantly, there are no upfront capital costs,” Schiller says. “Through Tru-Trac, we offer a customised easy and very rapid service, with a very modest service charge that is easily justified by improved conveyor belt reliability and uptime.” “Over the past three decades, Tru-Trac has built a formidable reputation, extend ing its footprint and sales across Africa and worldwide, and the addition of the Rip Prevent+ system will be a gamechanger in the market,” concludes Jonathan Rogoff, CEO of Tru-Trac. https://tru-trac.com

November-December 2024 • MechChem Africa ¦ 7