End User

The Customer is one of the largest mines having several polymetallic underground mines plus an 800 ktpa gold and base metals processing plant, located in New South Wales, Australia.

Scope

Integrate the water consumption parameters to the already existing centralized SCADA System. Also, automate the operation of a water pumping system at one site and integrate it to the SCADA system. 

Background

The Customer needed to monitor the usage of water at different sites for efficient utilisation and reducing wastage as the usage of water at different sites of gold mines were not analysed effectively. The pH and Conductivity of water were also required to be collected and monitored. 

The Customer had a centralized SCADA System AVEVA Plant SCADA (formerly Citect SCADA from Schneider Electric) used for monitoring and control of different systems, which had sufficient capacity to accommodate more systems. 

While examining for integrating water consumption with this SCADA System, it appeared cabling wasn’t possible at several metering points. Also, all the metering points had 230VAC power supply except at one point.

The Customer also wanted to automate the operation of a water pumping system at one site and integrate it to the SCADA. A wireless communication system is required at this site as cabling is not possible from this site to the existing gold mine SCADA network for the water metering stations.

System Description

• Measured the flow rate and total volume of water using flow meters, which are integrated to nearby existing PLC Panels of the Gold mine in two ways – Wired communication (wherever hardwiring is possible) and wireless communication (where wiring is not possible).
• The water quality parameters (TDS and pH) are measured using HACH analysers, this instruments are also connected to the existing PLC panel
• At some points we installed 2.4GHz based Industrial Wireless Communication devices from Banner Engineering to connect the flow meter signal with the nearby PLC panel. There are two wireless flow metering stations in this project – one station is powered with Solar and one has a 230VAC power supply.
• Additional IO cards are used in existing Rockwell’s CompactLogix PLC system to accommodate new signals. Rockwell CompactLogix PLC is already connected to the Centralized SCADA.
• A new Rockwell CompactLogix PLC based control panel is delivered to automate the operation of the pump, and this PLC panel is integrated to the central SCADA through Banner 900MHz RF Industrial Data Radio.
• New screens and tags are configured for all the new flow meters, quality analyser, and new pump in central SCADA so that the user can monitor the water consumption, water quality parameters from the central SCADA. The values of daily, weekly and monthly consumption from the central SCADA can also be seen.

Result

• Centralised monitoring of water consumption made possible with historical analysis like daily, weekly, monthly consumption etc.
• Reliable wireless communication system solved the difficulty in cabling.
• Enabled monitoring & analysis of water quality parameters.
• Solar powered system solved the lack of power source.
• Automated the manually operated pump with required safety interlocks and possible to monitor its operation from the central SCADA.