Recently, customers from around the world joined Metso in Suzhou, China, for a live demonstration of Metso’s revolutionary Media Pumping System (MPS) for HIGmill™ and SMD applications. The event brought together Metso experts, media suppliers and customers for three days of classroom sessions and hands-on demonstrations, showcasing how the mobile MPS simplifies media handling before and after mill maintenance.
Metso Media handling systems (MHS) are designed to cost-effectively facilitate the fast and safe handling of stirred mill media during a shutdown process for the mill maintenance activities. It says the pre-engineered solutions deliver rapid, safe and scalable/optimised solutions for handling your media applications. The range of solutions for MHS includes Media pumping, Media charging and Media lifting systems.
The Metso media pumping system (MPS) showcased in Suzhou is used in ceramic media attrition mills (HIGmill™ and SMD). MPS eases the media handling and storage tasks before and after a mill shutdown for inspection or maintenance. A typical MPS is equipped with a media transferring device to move media, a screen to remove slurry particle and undersize media, and a hopper/bin for storage. The largest model is the MPS40 with a 40 m3 storage capacity and ability to supply 110 t/h of dry media to 50,000L HIGmills.
The Metso Media charging system (MCS) handles steel media for Vertimills® before and after a mill shutdown for inspection or maintenance. The first step in accessing a Vertimill for internal inspection and maintenance work is to drain the media into a floor sump. To refill media into a Vertimill®, a loader is used to reclaim media from the floor sump and load the used media onto the load-out pocket conveyor. The pocket conveyor moves media into the Vertimill® via a loading chute. The load-out pocket conveyor is mounted on a mobile base that can be relocated to suit the drain or refill function and position.
To load new media into multiple Vertimils® (VTMs), the same pocket conveyor is used to elevate media with one transfer conveyor per mill with a diverter chute to direct media into the mill or onto the next conveyor to other mills. This combination for new media addition is called the Media distribution system. The largest model is the MCS200, that can supply 200 t/h of dry media for large VTM units from the 4500 to 7000 model.
The Metso Media lifting system (MLS) fulfills steel media handling objectives using conventional lifting in a dedicated path cost-efficiently without compromising safety. MLS is an improved version to numerous existing methods of handling steel media. MLS consists of a kibble loading chute, dedicated kibble, load-out bin and optional a support structure with monorail and hoist.
The key difference between MLS and MCS is the throughput and scalability to handle multiple mills. MLS is a fixed system that can be used to serve one mill or two adjacent mills. With the automation system, MLS can handle both new and used media with the function of mass loading used media and regulating the dosing process of new media.
