Buoyant demand for new design breaker drum

The third conversion of a rotary Bradford breaker at Khutala Colliery near Witbank, South Africa, to the new design breaker drum has been completed with installation being achieved over a weekend. The breaker was taken off line on a Friday morning and was back in production, with the new drum, on Sunday afternoon.

The new 80 t drum, 10.5 m long and 4.5 m in diameter, was manufactured using the refurbished cast iron ends of the old worn breaker drum which was replaced in the second breaker conversion for Khutala Colliery, thus reducing costs to the colliery significantly.
The drum, which is used in a secondary crushing application, has a design capacity of up to 2,000 t/h of pre-crushed and pre-screened run-of-mine coal, a significant improvement over the old drum’s capacity of 1,200 t/h. Its beams are manufactured from structural steel, and the screen plates, lifters and feed ploughs from abrasion-resistant steel.

Demand for such conversions has been buoyant since Bateman Engineered Technologies, part of the Bateman Engineering Group, started marketing the new design drum in 2005. In addition to the three at Khutala Colliery, all completed in the past three years, rotary breakers at South Africa’s Middelburg Mine North and Boschmanskrans Colliery have recently been upgraded to the new drum design, while two others, at Tselentis Colliery and Middelburg Mine South, also in South Africa, are in the process of conversion.
The new design rotary breaker drum incorporates a number of advanced features to, amongst others, enhance the robustness and rigidity of the drum as well as facilitate maintenance of the drum in situ.

The new features on the drum include heavier beams and screen plates designed to butt up against, instead of overlap one another where attached to the beams. In addition, the lifters and feed ploughs are attached directly to the beams. These design improvements facilitate replacement of worn screen plates and improve retention of the fasteners.

Other improvements include the screen plates being of a grid type rather than being fabricated from flat plate, resulting in a longer plate life and greater drum capacity from the increased open area. The grid-type screen plates, together with the heavier beams for screen plate support, are more resistant to deflection from impact with heavy rocks in the feed.

A second refuse plough has also been included to counter balance the first refuse plough, improving the balance of the drum, and increasing stone discard capacity.

For further information, please contact Paul Davies, Manager, Spares & Services, or Dan Lategan, Product Engineer, Bateman Engineered Technologies on +27-11-201-2300 or email spares@bateman-bet.com.

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