Energy saving for belt conveyors by speed control

Belt conveyors are widely used in bulk solids handling and conveying systems. Considering the extensive use of belt conveyors, their operations involve a large amount of energy. Taking the relevant economic and social challenges into account, there is a strong demand for lowering the energy consumption of belt conveyors, and for reducing the carbon footprint. Speed control is one of the promising approaches for reducing the power consumption of belt conveyors. This thesis focuses on the application of speed control to belt conveyors for reducing their energy consumption. Research on belt conveyor speed control has already been carried out for more than twenty years. However, rare implementations of speed control to reduce energy consumption can be found in practice. One major reason is that the current research does not cover issues like the potential risks (such as the risk of belt over-tension, the risk of belt slippage around the drive pulley and the risk of motor over-heating) and the dynamic analyses of belt conveyors in transient operations. Therefore, speed control of belt conveyors is not often successfully applied in practice...