Howden South America, in partnership with WEG, are supplying the refrigeration project (phase 1) for Caraíba Mine in Jaguarari, state of Bahia, Brazil. Supported by Cooling System Howden technology, the project ensures safe and economical underground refrigeration. Howden counted on WEG's key participation with emphasis on an E-house for a refrigeration and an electrical package to drive the plant from the initial engineering stage, to manufacturing, commissioning and start-up, including transport to the mine site.
In addition to the W22Mining super premium electric motors, the WEG solution included a 2500 kVA dry transformer, a complete ELW Mining E-house with auxiliary Wall Mounted air conditioning systems, fire protection and other internal circuit as well as an intelligent CCM06 that includes CFW11 frequency drive, Enterprise nobreak and automation system with PLC panel. The solution provided by WEG in partnership with Howden brought together the technical teams of both companies and reduced the time required for electrical interconnections and equipment start-up since the E-house is supplied with all internal interconnections and fully tested at the factory.
Howden Sales Director, Edson Luis Geraldini, stated that the Howden and WEG partnership represents a significant drop in the internal temperature, in a 1400-meter deep mine with 105 kilometers of galleries and 8400 meters of ramps thus providing a more pleasant environment for the workers. At the same time, the equipment for the second phase of the project for the new mines that are part of the Caraíba Mine industrial complex are already in production at WEG with operation expected for the first quarter of 2022.