AC drives from Control Techniques feature on a new shiploader installed at the Dalrymple Bay Coal Terminal in the port of Hay Point, Queensland, Australia. The massive shiploader serves a total of 14 mines in Central Queensland including Blair Athol and is part of Babcock & Brown Infrastructures expansion plans.
The coal terminal unloads about 15 - 18 trains a day at the nominal rate of 5,500 tonnes per hour, for export to Japan, China and India, amongst others. The recent Stage 6 Expansion, added a new berth and the installation of the new ship loader to the existing 2 berths/2 shiploader combination, increasing capacity to 56 million tonnes pa.
The coal loader, weighing 1030 tonnes and 49 metres high, was built on the Brisbane River and moved by a heavy lift ship to the Dalrymple Bay Berth No 3. The operation was synchronised to coincide with a low tide to give a mast clearance of just 2.5 metres under the Brisbane Gateway Bridge!
Control Techniques Australia was awarded the contract for the control of all variable speed AC motors on the machine by contractors Clough Downer JV. Control Techniques solution was for a scheme whereby all drives communicated with a PLC via DeviceNet, with encoder feedback giving closed loop motor control and all drives featured additional on-board processing.
Despite the size of the coal loader, space for drives cubicles was limited, says Ananda Sebastian, managing director of Control Techniques Australia Pty, based in Sydney.
The client was pleased with our solution based on Unidrive AC drives and drives and switchgear were mounted back-toback in specially designed compact cubicles. We had to commission the drives for the boom before it left the dock in the Brisbane River so that the boom could be lowered to pass under the Gateway bridge. Once installed at Dalrymple Bay, we completed the final commissioning, which was completed very quickly to the client s full satisfaction.
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