At a quarry in Turkey, heavy haul trucks are carrying hundreds of tonnes of materials, with no external power. It’s not quite perpetual motion, but it is removing the need for diesel or cables on a hard working site.

NUH Cement commissioned ABB to repower a 30-year-old Euclid haul truck. The truck collects loads from a hill top quarry, carries them downhill, and then returns uphill empty. That gave the team at ABB an idea: rather than losing the gravity energy of the load to braking, why not capture it and use it to power the truck back uphill?

The job took careful modelling, to ensure the trucks could be relied on, whatever the circumstances on site. With the batteries being constantly charged and discharged, the impact of this on their lifespan and health also had to be considered.

The scope of this work is far wider than might be expected. There are more than 70,000 trucks like this worldwide, and many are working in similar conditions. And the approach ABB took to the project, of careful study of a client’s site condition, offers a method for decarbonising across industry, one win at a time.

Guests

Thomas Huggenberger, Head of Technical Project Management, ABB

Ece Akyalçın Turhan, Service and Project Manager, ABB Traction

Fabiana Cavalcante, Global Head of Mobile E-Power, ABB

The post #336 Gravity-Powered Heavy Haul – Engineering Matters Awards winners episode first appeared on Engineering Matters.