Panaust Shares Insights

Panaust shares insights into using real-time information to improve plant...
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Contributor: Megan Edwards

Posted: 06/01/2014 12:00:00 AM EDT | 0
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Tags: ausasia mintech | scada | process control

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At Mining IQs SCADA Australia conference in Sydney on 27 May, Dirk Baas, Senior Process Control Engineer at
Panaust Limit joined us to present on Using Real-Time Information to Improve Plant Performance. Dirk shared
statistics and insights from their Phu Kham plant and mining operation in Laos.
Dirk was brought on board by Panaust in 2011 to work on improving their plant performance, as the copper deposit in
Laos was good, but not of such a level that Panaust could be complacent about recovery levels, productivity and
efficiency in order to remain competitive.
Panaust began the overhaul of their process control systems by starting with the crusher control. Dirk detailed how
they had a 5 tier hierarchy approach to upgrading the system:
1.
Process objectives
2.
Holistic control getting the whole operation to work as one
3.
Advanced control
4.
Plant stabilisation and regulatory control getting different loops to talk to each other and ultimately removing
operators from regulatory control

5.
Field instrumentation
The holistic control phase is a huge step towards real-time information that the management teams can analyse at
the end of each shift to see how it ran and make any big changes accordingly, but this was only one part of Panausts
strategy. This access to live data had 3 major implications for Panaust:
1.
2.
Operator situational awareness

Effective production reporting and downtime analysis (keep reading for more specific information on this)
3.
High level advanced control
They went on to create four levels of data flow and transparency, designed at each level to filter out information that
wouldnt be required by the next level (depending on the job function and responsibility of the users accessing each
level). To achieve this Dirk worked closely with Panausts IT department, as they had multiple databases that had to
filter in to this overarching system.
Complex process control can be executed through a variety of methods and some may choose to employ a mixture
of them all. Panaust primarily uses model-based control and model-predictive control. Using model-based control
does require significant upfront effort Dirk admitted, but once the process has been fully identified and modelled you
should then have a very stable control which will require little adjustment and should produce better results than
manual operators.
Dirk used a PID block as the key building block rather than a multiple-variable control form. However, by using
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several he was able to create a multi-output control system that aimed at improving the control of their two roughers
to ensure they were balanced and contributing equally, whilst creating the best froth suitable for copper recovery.
After mapping out the rougher process flow diagram, they acquired data sets over a 5 day period, where the data
was gathered at intervals of 5 minutes. The findings from this required some operator adjustments to then be made,
before it was stable. Before this overhaul, the operator would make 4311 setpoint adjustments to 30 regulatory loops.
Afterwards, the operator made 53 setpoint changes to the required volume setpoint, a significant change.
In terms of more specific results, Dirk revealed:
The average volume of copper recovered increased from 1,317m3/h to 1,415m3/h.
The time the concentrate hopper overflowed, reduced from 3.8% to 0.3% of operating time.
This kind of improvement makes a big impact to the bottom line of a mining operation. The approach Panaust applied
to these roughers, they then also applied out to the SAG Mill Control, thickener control, cyclone pressure control and
pH and cyanide control over the next few years (these upgrades were taking place on an existing mill, not a new
build, so had to be implemented in stages). They are currently working on their Alarm management system.
Dirk then went on to share the impact these changes made on production and downtime, as evidenced by their
reports. Crushing performance throughput beat budget in Q4 FY13 and the mine hugely reduced unscheduled and
scheduled down time of the plant (of course reducing opportunity cost enormously). The availability reporting solution
was implemented in July 2013 and the H2 results vs. H1 of that year were impressive:
Availability increased by 9%
Equipment utilisation (including plant and fleet) increased by 11%
Operating time increased by 12%
Production tonnes output increased by 12%
If youd like to check out Dirks full presentation, you can download that on Mining IQ too:
http://www.miningiq.com/it-data-security/white-papers/panaust-presentation-by-dirk-baas-using-real-time/
Contributor: Megan Edwards
CHINA Magontec to Provide

Plant and Equipment
Mineral Processing Plants - Top

Considerations to Avoid
Downtime
You Should Check Out:
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Process
Control: What
are the
Potential Gains
of System
Upgrades?
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Panaust shares insights into using real-time information to improve plant...