Littelfuse and Epitron help Newmont Mining improve operations and safety MP8000 Motor Protection Relays Protect Newmont Corporation’s Water Pumps
Installed in the motor control panels, the Littelfuse MP8000 relays shuts down pumps when they run dry, which prevents pump failure and costly replacement.
By Mark Pollock
Newmont Corporation is one of the
power, which are expensive to re-
would be able to detect a low water
world’s leading gold mining com-
place, as is the associated downtime
condition.
panies. Newmont’s headquarters is
from flooding.
located in Denver, Colorado, US and has gold mines in North America, South America, Africa, and Australia. Newmont
electrical
engineering
Epitron selected two potential sup-
To address high-cost pump failures,
pliers of an undercurrent monitoring
the electrical engineers asked Epitron
device.
Inc., a local electrical distributor and manufacturer of motor control pan-
The first supplier was a broad-based
els, to find a solution.
manufacturer of electrical and elec-
mine water removal pumps, which are
Search for a solution
nents. The second was Littelfuse, the
supposed to shut off when there is no
Without water flowing through a
water to cool them. The pumps have
pump, the pump’s current draw
fault ground-check relay, which is
a shut-off switch activated by a float.
would be abnormally low because of
In mine environments, mud can cause
the light load condition. They knew
the float to stick, causing pump mo-
that undercurrent protection could
tors to fail by running dry, overheat-
detect a low water condition and be-
The SE-105 is a combination ground-
ing, and burning up. The mine uses
cause of this abnormally low current,
wire monitor and ground-fault relay
pump motors as large as 50 horse-
an undercurrent protection device
designed
managers in Timmins, Ontario, were looking for a better solution for their
106 PotashWorks 2021
tronic
power-distribution
compo-
manufacturer of the SE-105 groundwidely used throughout the Canadian mining industry, as well as in Epitron’s motor control panels.
for
resistance-grounded