July 2007System Integration & Control Systems Design
With more than 100 years of combined engineering experience in the fields of plant automation, simulation, optimisation and information systems in mineral processing and related industries, systems engineering and integration company Iritron has a sound track record of successes.
The hierarchy of systems that the company engineers includes instrumentation and electrical systems, PLC and scada levels, through to the plant information and manufacturing execution systems. In more mature environments the company's involvement extends to engineering and training simulators as well as scheduling and optimisation systems.
Rampura Agucha concentrator plant
The Rampura Agucha lead-zinc concentrator plant in India embarked on a two phased plant upgrade project.
In phase I the existing Honeywell TDC3000 was decommissioned with the minimising of downtime on operating plant as a primary objective. The original Allen-Bradley PLCs, which handle the main electrical, sequencing and process interlocks were retained, allowing the changeover to the new control system to proceed with only nominal interruption to operations. A new interface was developed between the existing Allen-Bradley PLCs and new GE Fanuc PLCs that form part of the phase II Proscon system.
This project phase incorporated a major plant expansion which included a new process plant for the milling, flotation and de-watering processes at the Rampura Agucha concentrator.
The control system implemented on this project is a hybrid Proscon DCS system, which integrates GE Fanuc PLCs and Cimplicity scada platforms. The system is linked to the existing Allen-Bradley and new GE Fanuc PLCs which provide plant stabilisation control. The inter-PLC communication between the existing Allen-Bradley PLCs and new GE Fanuc PLCs makes use of Data Highway Plus cards to transfer a data block between the PLCs. The communications from the GE Fanuc PLCs to the Proscon system use a Genius Bus network. All operating control loops, drives and sequences are linked to this system to ensure effective total plant control.
Iritron's main responsibilities on this project were the design and preparation of all the appropriate detail design drawings for system panel manufacture, the functional specification for the Proscon software development, the implementation and testing of all software, and the installation and commissioning of the system.
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