When panel lengths were increased, conveyance concerns began to appear. The power and belt strengths needed for these lengths approaching 4 -5 km were much larger than had ever been used underground before. Problems included the large size of high power drives not to mention being able to handle and move them around. And, although belting technology could handle the increased strength requirements, it meant moving to steel reinforced belting that was much heavier and harder to handle and more importantly, required vulcanized splicing. Since longwall panel conveyors are constantly advancing and retreating (getting longer and shorter), miners are always adding or removing rolls of belting from the system. Moreover, since vulcanized splicing takes several times longer to facilitate, lost production time due to belt moves over the course of a complete panel during development and mining would be extreme. Now the need surpassed the risk and the application of intermediate drives to limit belt tensions and allow the use of fabric belting on long center applications was actively pursued.
Today, intermediate drive technology is very well accepted and widely used in underground coal mining. Many mines around the world have incorporated it into their current and future mine plans to increase the efficiency of their overall mining operations. 6
The tension diagram in Figure 20 shows the simple principal and most significant benefit of intermediate belt conveyor drives. This flat, head driven conveyor has a simple belt tension distribution as shown in black. Although the average belt tension during each cycle is only about 40% of the peak value, all the belting must be sized for the maximum. The large drop in the black line at the head pulley represents the total torque or power required to run the conveyor.
By splitting the power into two locations (red line), the maximum belt tension is reduced by almost 40% while the total power requirement remains virtually the same. A much smaller belt can be used and smaller inpidual power units can be used. To extend the example further, a second intermediate drive is added (green line) and the
peak belt tension drops further.
The tunneling industry was also quick to adopt this technology and even take it to higher levels of complexity and sophistication. But the main need in tunneling was
the necessity of using very tight horizontal curves.
By applying intermediate drives (Figure 21) to an application such as the Baumgartner Tunnel as described in Figure 10 above, belt tensions can be controlled in the horizontal curves by strategically placing drives in critical locations thereby allowing the belt to turn small curves.
In Figure 22, the hatched areas in green represent the location of curved structure. The blue line represents carry side belt tensions and the pink line represents return side belt tensions. Notice belt tensions in both the carry and return sides are minimized in the curves, particularly the tightest 750m radius.
Figure 22
Although aboveground overland conveyors have not used this technology extensively to date, applications are now starting to be developed due to horizontal curve requirements. Figure 23 shows a South American, 8.5km hard rock application which requires an intermediate drive to accommodate the four relatively tight 2000m radii from the midpoint to discharge.
Figure 23- Plan View
Figure 24 shows a comparison of belt tensions in the curved areas with and without distributed power.
The benefit of distributed power is also being used on the MRC Cable Belt. However, since the tension carrying ropes are separate from the load carrying belt, installing intermediate drives is even easier as the material never has to leave the carry belt surface. The tension carrying ropes are separated from the belt long enough to wrap around drive sheaves and the carry belt is set back on the ropes to continue on (Figure 25). 带式输送机技术英文文献用中文翻译(4):http://www.youerw.com/fanyi/lunwen_34337.html