Canadian gold exploration and development company Detour Gold Corporation, orders four 2 x 7.5 MW dual pinion drive systems for their Detour Lake gold project.
Baden, Switzerland, May 17, 2010 – ABB, the leading power and automation technology group, has won an order from the junior mining company Detour Gold Corporation for the delivery of four low speed dual pinion drive systems for its new gold mine in Canada. Construction of the 55,000 tonnes per day open-pit operation is expected to start in late 2010, following receipt of permits for gold production commencing in early 2013.
The Detour Lake project is approximately eight kilometres west of the Ontario-Québec border and 180 kilometres northeast of Cochrane, in the relatively under-explored Abitibi Greenstone Belt in northeastern Ontario. The property encompasses 274 square kilometres, including the Detour Lake deposit, which contains an open-pit reserve of 8.8 million ounces of gold. Detour Lake is expected to be among the largest gold operations in North America.
ABB’s scope of supply includes four sophisticated dual pinion low speed mill drive systems for two semiautogenous (SAG) and two ball mills, each consisting of synchronous motors, a converter transformer and a frequency converter ACS6000 including active rectifier units who will allow the mill drives to achieve a power factor of 0.90 leading. ABB will also deliver the programmable logic controller (PLC) to control the drives and mill auxiliaries as well as two containerized E-houses for the two ball mill drives. Each mill drive will have a rated power of 2 x 7.5 MW.
These systems include the largest low speed dual pinion mill drives in the world. The low speed concept operates without a gearbox and the motors will drive the pinions directly, greatly reducing wear on the equipment.
ABB won the contract because the company’s dual pinion mill drive systems are the most mechanically friendly solutions available on the market today. The system provides real time frozen charge protection which is especially important for the operation of the ball mills. Also ABB’s dual pinion drives solutions provide the option of variable speed, which enables the end user to increase the availability of the complete production line.
Deliveries of the equipment will start in October 2011.
ABB (www.abb.com) is a leader in power and automation technologies that enable utility and industry customers to improve their performance while lowering environmental impact. The ABB Group of companies operates in around 100 countries and employs about 117,000 people.