The world’s most powerful belt conveyor system at Chuquicamata, Chile, is a state-of-the-art, highly complex conveyor designed to transport copper ore from the new underground mine to the concentrator plant.
This incredible system, for Codelco’s Chuquicamata Underground Mine Project in Chile, transports crushed copper from underground storage bins to the surface along a 7 km underground tunnel that overcomes 900 m of vertical elevation change.
Once on the surface, the ore then travels along an overland conveyor that transports it the final 6 km to the distribution silo. The underground system (comprising two conveyors of about equal length) as well as the overland conveyor boast advanced gearless drive technology provided by our drive technology partners, ABB.
Total installed drive power for the entire system, including various feeder conveyors, totals 58 MW, of which there are 11 x 5 MW gearless synchronous motors. Another significant achievement is the installation of the newly developed steel cord belt, ST10000, on the uphill tunnel conveyors. This marks the world’s very first conveyor system to employ this premier steel cord belt technology.
