Greenfields project yields a healthy 2 tons of gold per month

May 2002 System Integration & Control Systems Design

Randgold's Morila Mine is a greenfields project designed to process 250 000 tons of ore a month to yield in excess of 2 tons of gold at highly competitive rates. The mine is fully automated and necessarily self-sufficient with the nearest logistics infrastructure located 5 hours' drive away in Mali's capital, Bamako. The automation of the mine has been so successful that, at times, only six plant operators are in charge of this enormous undertaking.

Johannesburg-based Metallurgical Design and Management (MDM) was responsible for the design of the plant as well as all functional specifications.

Harare-based system integrator Industrial Automation installed the HMI solution: "We were responsible for the implementation of the control system for which we used Wonderware's InTouch solution to control the various PLCs in the mine's seven functional areas," says Industrial Automation project manager, Tony Forbes. "An Ethernet network connects the PLCs to the scada system which consists of two operational InTouch workstations and a third for development purposes. In addition, there are two workstations running FactoryFocus that are used essentially by the metallurgists."

Not being constrained by an existing infrastructure, MDM was able to generate a functional specification that would meet Randgold's business objectives for the mine and one that would also facilitate the development and commissioning of the control system. "Our off-site development took a mere six months," continues Forbes, "and we spent 41/2 months on site, the majority of which had to do with instrumentation issues rather than the scada control system. All-in-all, concise specifications from MDM and flexible and industry-standard software coupled to our knowledge of the industry contributed to the success of a major and unique mining operation in record time. A major benefit for our client was that there were no surprises or unpredictable problems - at least none that we could not solve at short notice."

Mike le Plastrier, Futuristix

011 723 9900

[email protected]

www.futuristix.co.za

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