Björn Jonsson has been appointed International Enterprise Line Supervisor for Mining & Supplies inside ABB’s Course of Industries division – IM Editorial Director Paul Moore just lately had the possibility to take a seat down with him to speak about his background – and naturally some points of the mining market, together with electrification
Q: As of October 1, you assumed the function of International Enterprise Line Supervisor for Mining & Supplies inside ABB’s Course of Industries division – are you able to inform us a bit about your background?
A: I’ve been with ABB for over 22 years. That has been 22 years of steady progress and improvement, beginning as a commissioning engineer in 2003. Since then, I’ve had the possibility to develop and held numerous management roles, from International Service Supervisor for Paper, Metals and Cement to HUB Division Supervisor for Course of Industries North Europe, and most just lately, International Enterprise Line Supervisor for Hoisting. My profession has spanned a number of industrial segments, with rising deal with mining over the previous 9 years. Whereas I’ve spent six years overseas, most of my time has been in Sweden, house of numerous course of industries. I’ve additionally naturally been actively concerned with Svemin, the Swedish Affiliation for Mines, Mineral and Steel Producers.
IM Editorial Director Paul Moore with Björn Jonsson, International Enterprise Line Supervisor for Mining & Supplies on a go to to the Boliden Rävliden battery trolley mission
Q: Are you able to increase on the enterprise line construction and what’s behind it?
A: The enterprise line Mining & Supplies that I’m main consolidates ABB’s mining options beneath one roof, together with electrification, automation, digital, hoists, grinding options, comparable to our gearless mill drives, and materials dealing with. This implies we are able to discover a variety of synergies internally to turn out to be extra environment friendly in some ways and provide one unified interface in direction of clients in mining, whether or not we’re speaking about hoists, gearless mill drives, digital, automation or trolley mining vans. Take eMine, for instance, our ‘grid-to-wheel’ electrification idea. It integrates electrical infrastructure, automation, and digital options. As mines electrify, manufacturing planning should align with electrical infrastructure. You propose the ability hundreds based mostly on battery truck charging scheduling, manufacturing hoisting and so forth and on the identical time take a look at availability and actual time price of power and have that every one built-in in a single system, in actual time. On the finish, you intend your manufacturing another way, and that’s the place ABB’s built-in method helps clients rethink manufacturing planning from the bottom up. I feel the function of ABB and firms like ABB is changing into more and more vital for our clients going ahead.
Q: What does that imply when it comes to when ABB will get concerned in a mining mission and who you collaborate with?
A: ABB is concerned in mining initiatives a lot sooner than earlier than. Beforehand, ABB usually joined initiatives after preliminary planning. Now we’ve got to be there firstly of the planning of the mine, and the identical applies to clients who’ve current brownfield mines and are about to rework and increase. Our Mining’s Second report confirmed that round half of mining clients need to make their mine electrical with an incremental method. I imply, taking it step-by-step, as a result of they need to section the prices, with out an excessive amount of manufacturing disruption. However even in case you are electrifying in small steps you continue to want to consider the total electrical infrastructure implications. For ABB, that is mirrored in a few of the strategic partnerships we’ve got put in place – each with main mining clients like Antofagasta Minerals, but in addition with key OEMs like Epiroc and Komatsu for instance – it’s all a part of that imaginative and prescient of working extra carefully from the start. We’re working collectively collaboratively over various years, and on various options, as no single firm can construct the fossil free mine themselves in isolation. You want competence from completely different events, and it’s additionally vital that every focuses on the areas the place they’ve core competence, and for us that’s automation, electrification and digitalisation. For the items we aren’t consultants in, such because the vans themselves, we’d like different companions to innovate.
The brand new ABB Enterprise Line Mining & Supplies consolidates ABB’s mining options beneath one roof
Q: Know-how strikes at a fast tempo – how will ABB be certain that it stays forward of the curve in its options for mining?
A: By innovation and funding. Our ambition is to assist our clients with not solely the options which are out there at this time, but in addition the options that will likely be out there tomorrow. This implies taking a look at our R&D and roadmap pipeline to make sure that when a mine mission is able to begin, they’ll get the very best know-how, for that mine, at the moment. In 2024, ABB invested round US$1.5 billion in R&D. Our objective is to steer with know-how and be the market chief in our energetic segments. And when you’re the largest within the phase, you could have the income wanted to make the important thing R&D investments to assist the longer term wants of our mining clients. So long as you try this, you may proceed to steer that evolution. Co-creation can also be a win-win method for the business to maneuver ahead. Taking the instance of Sweden, particularly within the mining phase, we’ve got a robust mining cluster that has advanced round this fashion of collaboration. A whole lot of the improvements that we’ve got performed are co-created with different main suppliers within the mining business, along with sturdy finish customers like Boliden and LKAB. Ultimately, it advantages them, as a result of then they’ve the newest and biggest know-how. On the identical time, we additionally get an opportunity to export them to different miners globally, and that additionally helps the business to share improvement prices and hold costs aggressive.
Q: Are there any notable in-depth collaborations out of your earlier roles that stand out?
A: The Sustainable Underground Mining (SUM) mission – which was arrange by LKAB in 2018, has been a key collaborative mission in my profession. ABB was part of it, together with Epiroc, Sandvik and Combitech. I used to be a part of main that and we actually achieved quite a bit, constructing new requirements for underground mining, with interoperable options throughout a number of OEMs, creating in the long run an autonomous, electrical and excessive productiveness underground fleet. ABB has supplied a lot of the digitalisation, automation and electrification experience. And when you go above floor, ABB has been very a lot concerned within the HYBRIT inexperienced metal mission – we equipped a full electrification and automation package deal for the pilot plant in Luleå. One other attention-grabbing one is our EcoHoist collaboration – we’re working with them on a subscale demo facility. Whereas ABB is the worldwide chief in skip based mostly hoisting techniques, different vertical materials transport options are more likely to have a spot going ahead. We don’t have the capability to have a look at all improvements in-house. In order an organization, a part of our technique is to collaborate with begins ups – exemplified by ABB’s SynerLeap startup accelerator program. Now we have equipped mining hoists since 1891, and our expertise and attain means we can assist them to industrialise their concept sooner, and in the end convey extra choices to our clients as nicely.
Q: How do your applied sciences obtain extra power saving wins and contribute to sustainability that manner?
A: Milling operations are an excellent instance – the biggest 40 ft SAG mills are large power shoppers. Gearless drives are about 3.6% extra environment friendly than geared ones – this may appear a small share, however it has a big effect over time in your operational prices but in addition in your local weather affect. On the identical time, gearless know-how has comparable advantages within the largest mining conveyor belts. For these and different functions we use state-of-the-art synchronous motors. The Chuquicamata copper mine gearless pushed conveyor has 11 x 5 MW synchronous motors totaling 58 MW – they create most uptime and effectivity. And on this utility, conveyors allow to take massive numbers of mining vans off the highway, so it comes with huge potential of fossil gas financial savings as nicely. This 12 months we additionally set a brand new world report by attaining 99.13% power effectivity with a motor destined for an Indian metal buyer – it should save round 61 GWh of power and $5.9 million in electrical energy prices over a 25-year lifespan – equal to 4 days of peak output from the world’s largest offshore wind farm.
Q: Trying lastly at eMine – what are the principle challenges of pushing the electrification envelope additional? Is it remaining conservatism and never desirous to tackle extra threat?
A: Electrification in mining is not a distant imaginative and prescient. Electrification has progressed and is inevitable. It’s simply taking just a little bit longer than possibly individuals would have anticipated 5 and even ten years in the past. One problem is getting access to inexperienced power and having that on the proper worth – in lots of mining areas that remains a serious stumbling block. Looking once more at our Mining’s Second report, there’s a few different issues that our clients additionally say are obstacles to electrification. One being entry to the fitting individuals and expertise. I really suppose {that a} manner of attracting individuals to work in mining is to make it extra technologically superior. At ABB we can assist by introducing new digital and automation applied sciences associated to electrification, and that features AI. One other challenge is the size of funding required to impress mining operations, which spans the brand new tools but in addition the brand new infrastructure – you must construct a manufacturing system which you can stay with for a protracted time period, which means you need to have low dangers. And naturally, if you wish to have low threat, it would imply that you simply don’t need to be one of many first to check new know-how. That’s why pilot initiatives are essential to take away obstacles. Our underground battery trolley mission with Boliden’s Rävliden is an efficient instance. We’ve performed six trolley initiatives globally, with a seventh underway, and in any respect these initiatives, whereas there’s an preliminary price, we’ve got additionally seen even higher productiveness enhancements than anticipated. We’re additionally doing a variety of research along with clients that present going electrical is possible from a technical and economical perspective. Underground, for instance, it means much less air flow and cooling necessities together with decrease upkeep prices. Once you add all of it up, the case for going electrical is stronger than ever.
