Technology helps predictive maintenance at Sossego Plant

The predictive maintenance of the conveyor belt of the Sossego Plant, in the State of Pará, demonstrated how vibration and temperature sensors, together with technology dashboards, help in the analysis, diagnosis and subsequent intervention of its elements during operation, reducing costs and accidents.

The clearest results were obtained specifically in the bearing of drum 16 (placed in the ore transport circuit of the Vale company), of the long distance conveyor belt, which had been presenting abnormalities in its operation and was evolving rapidly.

The truth is that being a large equipment, 2,500 meters long, with 19 drums and 3 drives, the repair of this type of asset becomes more complicated to be evaluated and diagnosed without the help of wireless monitoring technology.

After the implementation of Dynamox sensors and gateways, the automated detection of the conveyor belt began and with that, the Sossego Plant team was able to monitor the drums and thus find which of them had problems.

Therefore, by means of spectrals that use an expressive number of spectra collected daily from the equipment, the type of failure in the bearing of drum 16 was identified.

This was visualized in the automated detection dashboard through the Web Platform.

Thanks to this, it is possible to have an overview of the asset and time is saved with the analysis, directing the focus where it is necessary to intervene with maintenance (planned corrective).

This whole process generated an estimated earning potential of 1.5 million for the company.

In addition, the Dynamox development team created a customized trend of the current status of the equipment, as it progresses through criticality stages.

Likewise, after the predictive technical report, the monitoring of the drum 16 bearing was continued, and thanks to the help of the cascade spectra, it was possible to evaluate the equipment afterwards. In fact, this tool has a resource for evaluation of frequency magnitudes, with a variation of the color palette to quickly visualize the evolution over time.

Inspetion technology

In the vibration analysis after the replacement of the drum, the alteration in the graphs before and after applying the solution is clearly shown.

Evidence after the execution of the technical report

The bearing on the right side, with outer race failure, showed dragging and wear in a specific part of the bearing and the same defect was found (with less severity) on the left side.

In addition, uneven wear was evident on the right side of the drum liner. Taking this into account, it was likely that there was belt misalignment or drum unevenness.

The predictive maintenance team requested a final topographical survey on the belt drums and the misalignment of the elements was verified on site. According to the technical report, some of them did not comply with the maximum leveling/framing allowed by CEMA. An action and correction plan was then initiated to adjust them according to the standard and reduce losses.

Positive Impacts

After the diagnosis, replacement of the drum and the corresponding leveling, the equipment returned to operate at normal levels, which generated an increase in asset confidence and technical knowledge of the people involved in the analysis activity. Synergy between the areas of predictive inspection, plant and mine, and crusher maintenance.

Learn more about the Dynamox Solution and learn about Dynamox’s complete analytics and diagnostics model. 

Request a quotation here.

Source: Vale