Process Plant

CLEANER FLOTATION CELL MOTOR ISSUES

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 CLEANER MOTOR ISSUES
BACKGROUND

The Floatation Cleaner Agitator motors on the cells have a WEG China, 132kW, 550 volt, 10 pole motor
which rotates at 592 RPM.

The WEG data sheet supplied states that the no load motor current is 121 Amps (expected no load to be
in the region of 90-100Amps) , when commissioning it was discovered that all the motors were drawing
between 172 – 178 Amps which is approximately 60% of the full load current. The motors also had a
vibration of over 6.8mm/s when running at no load (the expected vibration is maximum of 1.5mm/s.

A motor was removed and taken to LHMartinusen for tests on a test bed, this was to ensure that there
was no structural issues interfering with the vibration readings and causing inaccurate readings.

The motor was tested and had the same vibration levels issues, the current was slightly lower at 168
Amps, once the power to the motor was removed the vibration dropped to 1.3mm/s indicating that the
vibration was electrical and not mechanical in origin.

The motor was opened as the bearings were still suspected by, various issues were observed from the
internal inspection, there was a rust residue on both the rotor and stator which was probably caused by
moisture ingress due to the length of time the motors were stored for, also possible bearing damage due
to the motors not being rotated during storage.

WEG china was consulted on the motors and informed the supplier that the vibration was a bearing issue
but did not indicate why the current was high.

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 CLEANER MOTOR ISSUES
10 POLE STATOR AND 10 BAR ROTOR

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CLEANER MOTOR ISSUES

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RECOMMENDATIONS

The 5 Cleaner motors must be replaced with correctly manufactured motors, the additional electrical
power consumption per motor would add an additional R 300, 000 per year = R 1, 500, 000 for all 5
cleaner motors