Mining, Minerals, Metals solution: Mining extraction and beneficiation

Value proposition

Main drivers

•  Mining is a highly complex and multi-dimensional industry made up of thousands of different processes. Integrated control systems and process data generated by mine operations are critical components to the entire mine information network. The main goal is to provide both equipment operators in the field and managers in the plant with access to real-time, interactive information that is essential for planning, managing and optimizing mine operations.

Value proposition

• Distributed architectures based on Ethernet TCP/IP provide openness and transparency at all levels of the enterprise.
• Ethernet simplifies the overall communications infrastructure by expanding the horizon of components and innovation, and providing consistency and simple integration of factory systems with business level communications.
• In addition, open Ethernet technologies promote a level of scalability and flexibility that is necessary to extend the life of mining installations.

Architecture

Main characteristics

Open and total connectivity:

The system provides open and simultaneous connectivity to all major industrial fieldbuses as well as integration for instruments, motor control, power systems and dedicated field devices. A transparent Ethernet TCP/IP backbone allows plant wide access to all of these devices (for configuration, data and maintenance).

Schneider Electric solutions utilize powerful control systems associated with integrated engineering and programming tools.

Combining innovation and power, our process control platform responds to critical demands of the mining industry:

•  Use of the highest performance equipment in its category while offering high availability functions (redundant systems)
•  Process control and advanced mathematical functions
•  Process simulations (off-line) without risk of actual operation, which saves time and money in commissioning, plant expansions or process improvements/ modifications.
•  Flexible programming languages covering both process engineering and the demands of electrical and maintenance teams.

Distributed system based on the real process hierarchy:

Our advanced design and generation software tool integrates process controllers and supervision systems in a common database. It structures the mine application according to the process functional diagram and delivers a true distributed control system environment that is open and flexible.

Robust operation and visualization:

Supervision systems provide a complete visualization of operations and mine processes. The operator benefits from a graphical view of all systems and variables, which allow you to make the right decisions and perform the appropriate actions in real-time.

Advanced clustering technology:

•  Provide a seamless operator view across existing control systems.
•  Provide a combination of control (including alarms, reports and trends), local to the process, paired with a central standby server.
•  Support additional processing for expansion requirements by simply adding a new server to the control system.
•  Control system segmentation to ensure that changes in one process unit do not affect changes in the others.
•  Use cluster swapping to re-use graphic screens between similar systems or for simulation/replay.

A robust environment

•  Roll out changes to graphic screens without restart
•  Enable alarm, trend and report changes without user restart
•  Deploy the changes to all systems in a single step

High-performance capabilities

•  Increased network fault tolerance support
•  Greater communication control with priority levels for standby communication paths
•  Reduced code overhead by processing code only when tags change
•  Simplified logging of users' actions
•  Support for Virtual Machine environments