VFDs for mining, minerals and cement operations

Mining operations demand uncompromising reliability and efficiency. Danfoss VFDs and power converters are built for extreme conditions, providing precise motor control, improved process performance, and significant energy efficiency gains across critical applications. Whether underground or at the surface, our solutions support safer operations, lower costs, and sustained uptime.

Superior mine ventilation control for safety and efficiency

Ensuring a safe underground environment through reliable airflow is paramount, but ventilation is also a major operational cost. Danfoss drives provide the industry’s most flexible and energy-efficient solution for mine ventilation control. By precisely managing fan speed for main, auxiliary, and booster fans, our drives drastically reduce energy consumption while ensuring safety standards are met. They integrate seamlessly into Ventilation on Demand (VOD) systems, ensuring you only use the energy required, saving significant operational costs.

Robust conveyor drive systems for mining

The smooth and reliable movement of materials is the lifeblood of any mine. Danfoss drives provide superior control for conveyor drive systems in mining applications, reducing mechanical stress on belts and drivetrain components. By ensuring smooth acceleration and deceleration, our solutions extend the life of long overland conveyors and reduce maintenance downtime. Operate reliably with motor cable lengths of up to 300 meters with no need for additional output filters. For systems with multiple motors, our advanced master-follower controls guarantee effective load sharing, maximizing belt life and ensuring reliable operation for your entire material flow process.

High-torque grinding mill drives and slurry pump control

Restarting a fully loaded mill or a pipeline filled with dense slurry demands exceptional torque, power, and control. Danfoss drives are engineered to deliver the high starting torque required for the most demanding of applications. Following an unexpected shutdown, our drives restart processes smoothly and safely; protecting equipment, minimizing stress on mechanical components, and restoring production quickly for reliable, high availability operation.

Built for the heat, dust, and demanding loads of the mining sector, Danfoss VFDs and system modules are the optimum choice for enhancing safety, reducing maintenance, and delivering significant energy savings across your entire operation.

Danfoss drives are built to thrive in the extreme temperatures, dust, and vibration common to mineral processing sites. With a robust design and advanced cooling technology, our solutions ensure a long, trouble-free lifetime for your equipment. Key features include:

• Intelligent heat management: Unique back-channel cooling technology integrated into our higher-power drives can reduce switch-room ventilation requirements by up to 90%. This cooling innovation allows for smaller, less expensive air-conditioning systems and significantly lowers operational costs.
• Harsh environment protection: Coated electronics and advanced internal cooling systems protect sensitive components from contaminants, ensuring high reliability even in dusty and corrosive atmospheres. Ingress protection ratings of IP55 and IP66 allow flexibility of installation, including decentral mounting closer to the motor. Our drives are designed to operate flawlessly in ambient temperatures up to 50°C without de-rating.

Superior performance for crushing, grinding, and SAG mill drive systems

Danfoss provides optimized control for your most power-intensive applications, ensuring you get the most out of your equipment.

• Mineral crushing drive systems: Our VFDs and soft starters provide smooth, controlled motor starting and stopping, reducing mechanical stress on crushers and conveyor belts. This minimizes wear and tear, extends equipment life, and reduces maintenance downtime.
• Grinding mill drives for mineral processing: Achieve precise speed control for grinding mills to optimize throughput and energy consumption. Our drives deliver high starting torque for fully loaded mills and can adapt to varying load conditions, ensuring stable and efficient operation.
• SAG mill drive systems: For large semi-autogenous grinding (SAG) mills, reliable and powerful drive systems are essential. Danfoss solutions offer the high torque, robust performance, and advanced control needed to manage these demanding applications, maximizing productivity and uptime.

Reduce project costs and simplify installation

The compact, space-saving design of Danfoss drives offers significant advantages for both new projects and retrofits.

• Long motor cable capability: Operate reliably with motor cable lengths of up to 300 meters without requiring additional output filters. This standard feature saves space, reduces installation time, and lowers overall project costs
• To extend unshielded cable length even further, couple with Danfoss sine-in sine-out filters
• Compact footprint: The high power density of VFDs from Danfoss ensures the market’s most compact design, which minimizes switchroom footprint and simplifies layout. In turn, this helps to reduce building size, air-conditioning requirement, installation effort, and total project investment: both in construction and operating costs.

In the demanding environment of a cement plant, process stability, energy efficiency, and equipment reliability are critical for success. Danfoss variable frequency drives (VFDs) are engineered to thrive in these harsh conditions, providing precise and robust control over your most vital applications to improve clinker quality, reduce energy consumption, and lower maintenance costs.

Precision control for rotary kiln drives

The stability of the kiln is crucial for consistent clinker production. Our solutions for rotary kiln drives deliver exceptional performance where it matters most. With high overload capacity and the ability to deliver high starting torque, our VFDs ensure reliable operation even under heavy loads. They provide smooth acceleration and deceleration, reducing mechanical stress on the entire drivetrain. This superior motor shaft torque performance and high-speed accuracy result in a more stable kiln, optimized production, and a longer lifetime for your equipment.

Maximum efficiency for clinker cooler drives

Clinker coolers are a significant source of electrical energy consumption within the cement pyro‑process, driven primarily by high‑capacity cooling, secondary, tertiary, and exhaust air fans. Danfoss variable frequency drives provide precise speed control for these clinker cooler fans, allowing airflow to be matched exactly to cooling and process demand. Because fan power varies with the cube of speed, even modest speed reductions deliver substantial energy savings. This optimized control not only lowers operating costs but also improves heat recovery efficiency by stabilizing secondary and tertiary air temperatures.

Reliable cement plant motor control for all applications

Beyond kilns and coolers, Danfoss provides robust cement plant motor control for every stage of your process. From crushers and conveyors to fans and pumps, our VFDs improve process control, reduce mechanical wear, and enhance the overall efficiency of your plant. Built to withstand high temperatures and dusty environments, our drives are the reliable choice for modernizing and optimizing your entire cement production line.

The terms VFD (variable frequency drive) and VSD (variable speed drive) are often used interchangeably. Both refer to a device that controls the speed of an electric motor by adjusting the power supplied to it. VFD is the more technically accurate term, as the drive specifically varies the frequency to control the motor’s speed. Danfoss specializes in high-performance VFDs for industrial applications.

Read more about VFDs

VFDs are fundamental to improving mineral processing efficiency in several key ways. They provide:

• Optimized process control: By enabling precise speed control of equipment like grinding mills, conveyors, and slurry pumps, you can perfectly match throughput to process requirements. This eliminates bottlenecks, improves final product quality, and maximizes output.
• Significant energy savings: VFDs drastically cut energy consumption by ensuring motors only run at the speed required for the load, especially on pumps and fans. This directly lowers operational costs, a major component of overall efficiency. 
  Increased equipment uptime: Smooth starting and stopping reduces mechanical stress on belts, gears, and couplings. This extends equipment life and, crucially, reduces unplanned downtime from mechanical failures.
• Predictive maintenance: Modern drives act as intelligent sensors, monitoring equipment health. This enables a proactive maintenance strategy to fix issues before they cause a costly shutdown, further boosting operational efficiency.

The benefits of a VFD for mine ventilation are significant. Firstly, they provide massive energy savings by allowing you to control fan speed based on real-time demand (ventilation on demand or VOD), so you only use the power needed. This drastically cuts operational costs. Secondly, they improve safety by ensuring reliable and controlled airflow. Finally, by enabling smooth starts and stops, VFDs reduce mechanical stress on fan motors and drivetrains, which lowers maintenance costs and extends equipment life.

Our drives are available in a wide range of enclosure ratings to suit any environment, including IP00, IP20, IP21, IP54, IP55, and IP66, depending on the enclosure size and power rating of the drive.

Yes. Our drives are engineered for harsh environments. We offer ratings up to IP66 / NEMA 4X, which are dust-tight and protected against high-power water jets, making them ideal for installation in processing plants or even outdoors with a simple weather shield. For higher power needs, we offer robust IP54 solutions.

Our drives are designed for reliable operation in ambient temperatures from –25°C to +50°C (–13°F to 122°F). They can operate at a maximum altitude of 1,000 meters (3,280 ft) without derating and can be used at up to 4,400 meters (14,435 ft) with derating.

For drives above 90 kW, we offer a unique back-channel cooling design as a standard feature. This heat management technology removes up to 90% of the heat directly from the drive’s power components, significantly reducing the heat load in your switchroom. This often eliminates the need for expensive, energy-intensive air conditioning systems, lowering both CAPEX and OPEX.

We currently support a broad range of voltage ratings from 200 V to 690 V to meet global industrial requirements.

Yes, we have a comprehensive portfolio to ensure high power quality. Our solutions include ultra low-harmonic (ULH) drives, enclosed low harmonic drives, and both passive and active harmonic filter systems.

Learn about cost-effective harmonic mitigation

A key benefit of our drives is their ability to operate with long motor cables without needing additional output filters. Depending on the product, they support shielded cable lengths up to 300 meters (typically 150 meters), saving cost and space in the cabinet.

Danfoss drives are supplied with integral RFI (radio frequency interference) filters as a standard feature for all EMC categories, which must be confirmed at the time of order. This ensures reliable operation of all other electrical equipment on the same installation without needing extra filters.

Our drives feature Automatic Motor Adaptation (AMA), a powerful algorithm that measures the motor’s electrical characteristics and optimizes the drive’s control parameters accordingly. This process takes only a few seconds, does not require spinning the motor, and ensures the highest control accuracy and operating efficiency for induction, permanent magnet (PM), or synchronous reluctance (SynRM) motors.

We support all major industrial communication protocols, including but not limited to PROFIBUS, PROFINET, MODBUS, EtherNet/IP, EtherCAT, POWERLINK, DeviceNet, CANopen, and OPC UA for seamless integration into your control system.

You have two easy options. You can use our PC software tools to download the parameter set and upload it to another drive, or you can upload the settings directly to the drive’s Local Control Panel (LCP), remove the panel, and plug it into another drive to download the configuration.

Our drives are designed for a long service life with minimal maintenance. For most frame sizes, the primary requirement is periodic cleaning of cooling fans to ensure optimal airflow. A DrivePro® service agreement will ensure a predictable maintenance budget and optimal reliability of your systems for many years to come

The model code (or type code) is a unique string of characters that defines the specific configuration of your drive. You can enter this code into the online configurator on our website for a full overview of its features, or refer to the product instruction manual.

As a pioneer in VFDs, Danfoss is your expert partner for industrial drive solutions. We engineer drives that deliver unmatched reliability and efficiency in the harshest conditions.

Our high-ingress IP66 enclosures enable decentralized mining automation solutions without costly cabinets, while a rugged design ensures reliable repositioning. We simplify installation with long motor cable support and boost your efficiency with unique back-channel cooling and regenerative drives that cut energy costs and support decarbonization. With high overload capability and integral condition-based monitoring, we ensure you maximize production and uptime.

Choose Danfoss to lower your total cost of ownership and drive your business forward.

What’s special about drives from Danfoss?