Ongoing confidence in special beltweighers pays dividends for Procon

Procon Engineering have won a prestigious £500K contract to supply their high performance Inflo Resometric Beltweighers and instrumentation to Swedish high-tech mineral group LKAB for their new concentrator and pelletizing plants, currently under construction at Kiruna, Sweden’s northernmost town.

LKAB is one of the world’s leading producers of upgraded iron ore products for the steel industry, specializing in customized iron ore products for blast furnaces and direct reduction. When production starts in the spring of 2008, these new plants will have a combined annual capacity of 5 million tonnes of pellets, complementing the existing concentrator and pelletizing plants .

With an ore body 4 km long, 80 m thick and reaching a depth of 2 km, Kiruna is the world’s largest, most modern underground iron ore mine. The operation employs around 1,800 people, of whom 400 work in the mine. Since mining began here over 100 years ago, LKAB has produced over 950 Mt of ore, yet only one-third of the original ore body has been extracted.

The beltweighers will be used for weighing a variety of materials, ranging from mined magnetite ore through to finished iron ore pellets. Crucial data from the beltweighers will be transmitted from the EP50 weighing terminals via the plants’ Profibus network.

The Inflo Resometric Beltweighers have an exceptional track record for reliability and accuracy, especially in such demanding applications. They provide a unique combination of features that ensure the key factors influencing belt scale performance are maintained in service over long periods of time. At the heart of the scale is the Digital Resometric force transducer or resonator, which provides unequalled levels of measurement performance that are repeatable for extended periods. The resonator has no moving parts and is pre-loaded to a standard level by the applied force from the weigh carriage.

Lateral chains are fitted between the weigh carriage and the rigid conveyor to prevent any unwanted side forces being introduced through factors such as poor belt tracking or material asymmetry. As a result, once the weigh carriage is installed and aligned, it only sees the vertical forces produced by the material being weighed. Periodic calibration checks can be carried out simply and expediently by utilising the built-in roll-over calibration weights fitted across the weigh carriage.

Procon’s Product Specialist Joe Naylor is justifiably proud of his company’s achievement in gaining the contract and as he concludes: “Environmental conditions are very tough at Kiruna, which is 145 km inside the Arctic Circle. LKAB already operate a number of our beltweighers and their ongoing confidence in our products stands testimony to the reliability of these units.”