Voest Alpine Mining & Tunnelling (VAMT) has developed a world-first automation system in conjunction with South Africa’s only scada software developer, Adroit Technologies.
The continuous miner is a complex piece of equipment employing a proprietary radio remote control system 'on board', which controls all the functions of the machine in respect of safety, performance and condition monitoring. Aiming to improve the efficiency of these capital-intensive machines by reducing the rand/tonnes mined - and at the same time improving safety - there was a need to have live data from the actively operating machine captured and displayed on surface, so that management decisions could be made proactively rather than reactively.
Adroit's scada package was used as the platform on which VAMT Automation Technician Freddie Mare, with continuous assistance from Adroit's development team, developed the Voest Alpine monitoring system (VAMS), an application for capturing live machine data and graphically displaying a mimic of the actual machine on surface. While the system is only used for monitoring purposes at present, it is envisaged that full control functions will soon be utilised.
Development of an OEM interface 'driver' took only 25 days, while about 200 man-hours were required to draw up the application for the first model of continuous miner. Thereafter, at a further 18 h each, five additional machine models were integrated into the system. During the development and integration stage, all means of communication (data and voice) were employed as the need arose, on a 24 h basis. "We had a deadline to achieve full integration before Y2K," automation manager Tommy Gibbs explains. "We completed the project with 1,5 months to spare.
"Our existing licencing agreement is unique in that it depends on the number of machines operating at one geographic site. Typically one machine utilises 150 tag points and we currently have 20 machines being monitored, with another five ready for the integration. Both analog and digital I/O are scanned," he reports.
The fact that Adroit is based on Windows NT suited VAMT's needs, because of the security options available and the compatibility with existing mine LAN environments. The company further expressed satisfaction with the fact that standards in Adroit were very open and there was an excellent list of drivers to back that up. For safety reasons, a system-specific driver with OEM security key was developed but developments on VAMT's machines will more than likely result in the future utilisation of standard protocol drivers.
"In addition to using a SQL database for open integration, we have an ambitious plan to use 'Web' technology on a global basis and have entered into a joint development project with Adroit to speed up this process," Gibbs reveals. This will enable one to view a machine in operation underground in South Africa from an office anywhere in the world via an Intranet.
Because of the critical nature, safety requirements and condition monitoring, Adroit's notification agent is used to send SMS messages regarding, for instance, methane alarms or high gearbox temperature warnings to the cellphones of relevant technicians.
This, in conjunction with trend-reporting, allows us to detect, analyse and take proactive measures against possible catastrophic failures while also logging the data involved for future use and analysis.
"We see reporting as having two functions," says Gibbs. "The trend report that comes as standard with Adroit's package is used for specific statistical analysis of recent events, with special events being logged. The resultant management reporting has assisted us significantly in improving overall machine operation and production output, in fact on one application we have gained as much as 20%.
"Currently, we utilise MS Access for these management reports but will be changing this so we can integrate functions like radio frequency identification tagging, MES and so forth. As part of our joint development package, we will also be linking Adroit to our instruction and parts list manuals.
"When we initiated the project with Adroit in June 1999 from a relatively low-level scada knowledge base, our primary reason for selecting Adroit was the user-friendliness of the application, the fact that one of the major users of our machines had standardised on Adroit for their plant environment (which makes integration simpler) and the willingness of Adroit, being locally based, to assist with this implementation," says Gibbs.
| Tel: | +27 11 658 8100 |
| Email: | [email protected] |
| www: | www.adroit.co.za |
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