Industry: Mining
Location: Australia
Circumstances: An Ore Winder at a major Australian mine operates continuously, lifting ore out of an underground mine at 400 Start-Stop operations every day, with production value of AUD$200,000 per hour. The winder operates for 6 months with a 70% duty cycle. Insulation Resistance reading prior to cleaning at 1 minute was 380 meg ohm.
Previous cleaning options included:
- Steam Cleaning
7 to 10 days are required to undertake steam cleaning. This method requires an oven to be erected to dry the windings, due to the large volume of moisture left in the windings from the cleaning process. Estimated production loss is $10 to $14 million. - Chemical Cleaning
4 to 5 days to undertake chemical cleaning. This method is done manually by hand using solvents, where cleaning effectiveness is limited to what can be accessed by hand. Estimated production loss is $8 to $10 million.
Dry Ice Cleaning to clean the ore winder. This cleaning method has a wider cleaning range; it can reach every nook of the winder, even the most isolated one, without producing any additional waste or excess. The winder was back in operation immediately following the cleaning process. A post-cleaning electrical safety test was conducted to confirm the excellent condition of the winder
Shutdown time was immensely trimmed into 10 hours only, with $2 million of production loss. Our client managed to save at least $6 million in lost production compared to other cleaning methods.