Copper and cobalt harvesting project bassed on fieldbusses

April 2000 Fieldbus & Industrial Networking

Honeywell Southern Africa has been awarded the control system contract for Anglovaal Mining’s (AVMIN) cobalt and copper from slag project on the Copperbelt in Zambia.

Cosac, as the project is known, entails the reclamation of slag from the Nkana slag dumps, transportation to Chambishi, feed preparation, smelting and pressure leaching. Copper and cobalt metal is then harvested within the existing Chambishi electrowinning plant.

AVMIN made the following EPCM appointments to address the process requirements: Dowding Reynard and Associates (DRA) for the feed preparation plant, Bateman Titaco for the arc furnaces and Hatch Africa for the leach plant and extensions to the Chambishi electrowinning circuits. The Kvaerner Metals scope also includes the utilities, cost control and overall project and construction management. AVMIN directs the project from its Johannesburg base with the technical input from its Roodepoort-based research staff and the Chambishi Metals operations staff. AVMIN maintains overall project management and directly manages the reclamation, transport and environmental scopes.

The project is unique in that Honeywell is to supply an intelligent starter option based on Device Net and the Cutler-Hammer IED. Plantscape’s distributed server architecture is to be used to create a single control system, while providing the additional integrity that allows sections of plant connected to a server pair to be operated completely independently.

This is the fourth largest project that Honeywell Southern Africa has implemented outside of South Africa in just over two years since the launch of the Plantscape system. There are Plantscape systems in Uganda, Angola, Namibia and now the Cosac project in Zambia. Three of these are in mining, metals and minerals and one in the petrochemical refining industry. Honeywell Southern Africa has evolved a unique remote site support strategy in order to manage and support these customers due to the remoteness, and at times, inaccessibility of these sites.

According to Zane van der Nest of Honeywell, the ability to provide an intelligent interface to Motor Control Centres (MCCs), as well as Foundation Fieldbus for intelligent analog-based control, has made Honeywell a serious contender in the mining metals and minerals industry. “Although Foundation Fieldbus is not being used at Cosac, customers have the choice of an additional vendor who can closely integrate both the electrical and regulatory process control elements based on the proven device net interface and the superior technology that Foundation Fieldbus offers,” states van der Nest.

In selecting Plantscape for this project, a team of adjudicators, consisting of the client/end user and members of the consortium, was appointed. Necessary criteria were identified that met the project requirements. In addition, market research was conducted to identify vendors that met these requirements and a systematic weighted approach was then used, resulting in the selection of the Plantscape hybrid DCS from Honeywell.

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