massive grabber crane in control at corus ijmuiden

Reference Story
massive grabber crane
in control at corus ijmuiden
Liquid-cooled Vacon active front-end drives control Corus’ grabber crane
Time is money, and the downtime of cranes is loads of money.
If a ship is not unloaded in time, penalties are to be paid.
Therefore, a reliable operation of AC drives that control the
crane plays a major role.
Within the city limits of Heemskerk, Beverwijk and Velsen in
the Netherlands, three massive grabber cranes raise their
heads high in the sky. These cranes with a total capacity of 40
tons each unload ships that transport coal and iron ore for the
Corus* steel company at their plant in IJmuiden.
Reducing expensive downtime
These cranes form the backbone of Corus IJmuiden, and the
need for refurbishing old drives dating from 1968 became
evident. Since December 2006, Vacon liquid-cooled active
front-end drives have been controlling the hoist and trolley
travel of one of the cranes. Encouraged by the reliable and
trouble-free operation, Corus IJmuiden has scheduled to
refurbish the second crane in October 2007.
Compact drives and high protection class
Liquid-cooled Vacon AC drives are very compact as the
power section is specially designed for liquid cooling and no
air channels are required. The compact size was the main
reason why they were chosen for the task. The space savings
compared to just the power module of a similarly rated aircooled drive can be up to 70%.
Another essential reason was that liquid cooling enables
the use of cabinets with a high protection class. The AFE
filters are also liquid-cooled. The physical size of the Vacon
solution in the electrical room allowed considerable spacesaving benefits to be achieved, and were therefore highly
appreciated.
Additional factor that contributed to the choice of liquidcooled Vacon AC drives was their heat loss transportation.
The crane is located in the middle of the coal and iron ore
storage fields, where the air is filled with coal and iron air
dust. Liquid-cooled drives made it possible to transport the
heat losses outside the electrical room without ventilating
the room and cabinets with the dust-filled air.
Feeding energy back to the mains
The AC drives are equipped with active front-end units to feed
the regenerative energy back to the mains. Vacon AFE drives
also generated a minimum level of harmonics and made it
easy to meet the harmonic specifications without the use of
dedicated, large 12-pulse transformers.
GTI Electroproject as system integrator
Vacon’s partner GTI Electroproject was appointed as
system integrator and was responsible for designing and
commissioning the drive system including the water cooling
system and grabber control.
Acceleration and deceleration of the trolley travel makes the
grabber of the crane swing. As unloading cycle times should
be as short as possible, the crane driver has to cope with the
swinging grabber. Here, the way the AC drives respond to
changes in the position of the joysticks plays a major role.
At Corus plant in IJmuiden, all crane drivers work with three
unloading cranes. Therefore, the response of the refurbished
crane should be equal to the response of the cranes not yet
refurbished. By using a very sophisticated speed controller
and freely programmable torque-to-speed characteristics of
the AC drives, GTI Electroproject attained equal responses
that fully satisfied the crane drivers.
“As a system integrator, we are very pleased with the
programming capabilities of the Vacon AC drives. This
applies not only to cranes but also to heating, ventilation
and air-conditioning as well as to other industries where we
are active,” says Mr Jan van Gurp, Managing Director, GTI
Electroproject.
The hoist of the crane is controlled by two 820-kW active
front-end-supplied liquid-cooled AC drives, and a trolley
travel is controlled by a 485-kW AFE-supplied liquidcooled AC drive. The drives are controlled by the Profibus
fieldbus.
Cover photo: The refurbished 40-ton crane unloads coal
and iron ore at Corus IJMuiden plant in the Netherlands.
Also the control of the movements and grabber control
logic were refurbished. Photograph: Courtesy of Corus
and GTI Electroproject.
The cooling water is supplied by a Donaldson Ultrafilter chiller
that produces cooling water with a constant temperature of
30 ºC.
Scope of supply from Vacon Benelux
Hoist:
Trolley travel:
2 x 820-kW active front-end (AFE) liquidcooled AC drives
1 x 485-kW active front-end liquid-cooled
AC drives
Water chiller
* Corus is Europe’s second largest steel producer with an
annual crude steel production of 18.3 million tonnes in 2006,
primarily in the UK and the Netherlands. Corus produces
carbon steel by the basic oxygen steelmaking method in
the UK at Port Talbot, Teesside and Scunthorpe and in the
Netherlands at IJmuiden.
Liquid-cooled 820-kW Vacon AFE unit in the enclosure.
Using normal drinking water as coolant, Vacon’s liquidcooled AFE units have a very compact construction
compared to the corresponding air-cooled units. Liquidcooled drives also comply with the requirement for a low
noise level, since no large fans, additional air conditioning
or filtered ventilation systems are needed.
Tel. +358 (0)201 2121
Fax +358 (0)201 212 205
www.vacon.com
[email protected]
RS00077A
Vacon Plc
Runsorintie 7, 65380 Vaasa, Finland