Optimization of Control System for Solvent

Extraction and Electrowinning Process

LESDE Plant Toquepala Cuajone

Elaborated by Adrin del Carpio and Juan Amado

Toquepalas Geographic Location

Toquepala is located south of Peru, in Tacnas

department, Jorge Basadre province, Ilabaya
district, 870 kilometers from Lima. Owned by
Southern Copper Corporation Southern Peru,
it is composed by an open pit mine, a
concentrator plant and a leaching plant, Solvent
Extraction and Electrowinning, this last has a
production capacity of 56,000 TM of copper
cathodes A grade LME.

TACNA
Toquepala
 Secuence of Copper Leaching
Mineral from Mine Mineral Crushing Stacking

Recovery
LESDE Plant Solucions Mineral Irrigation
 Secuence of LESDE Plant
LESDE Plant Solvent Extraction Tank Farm

Dispatch Harvest Electrowinning

 Control System History
Year Event

1995 Plant Start Production Capacity 35,141 TM of Copper Cathodes per year.

1997 Firsts improvements to Plant Control System

1999 First Expansion Production Capacity Expansion to 56,000 TM of copper cathodes per year.

Second Expansion Income of Northwest leachable deposits and establishment of data storage
2001
plant

2002 Optimization of Control System in Cuajones Crushing plant.

2005 Implementation of POWERNET Network for energy monitoring

2006 Modernization of Control System in Solvent Extraction Area

2007 Third expansion Income of Quebalix leachable deposits

2008 Modernization of Control System in Tank Farm

2009 Modernization of Plant Server Room

2010 Modernization of the DCS control system of pumping stations Northwest

2011 Modernization of Control System in Electrowinning

 Original Control System - 1995
Industrial Controllers:
Hardware: 16 Allen Bradley Series 5 PLCs
Software: Rockwell 6200 Software based on DOS

Communication Network:
Protocol: Data Highway Plus (DH+)
Way: Multimode Optical Fiber 8 threads
Configuration: dual ring redundant

Control Room, Human-Machine Interface (02 PCs) :

Hardware: 486 DX processor of 33MHz,
16Mb RAM, HDD of 320 Mb.
Software: Control View (DOS)
Network: gateway DH+ parallel
port/low speed.
 Improvement - 1997
Problems:
Obsolete Programs (DOS).
Signal Loss and intermittent communication (low speed DH+).
Increased time for system support and maintenance.
Manual data entry for daily reports.
Low capacity for information storage.
Limited bandwidth in the DH+ network for high fiber optic distances.
Unstable DH+ network caused by high distances.
False alarms caused by communication loss, operational problems.
System malfunction generates risk for field operators.
Solutions:
Migration of supervision software Control-View (DOS), to RSView (Windows95).
Migration of programming software 6200 (DOS) to RSLogix5 (Windows95).
Change of Control PCs (486 to Pentium I)
Increase of storage capacity (1,2 Gb)
Optimization of PID control loops for inflows to SX.
Graphic interface improvements of the monitoring system.
Implementation of DDE link for automatic report generation.
Evaluation of alternatives to solve instability DH + network fiber optic ring.
Change of external gateway for DH+ communication with PCs, through KTX cards, improving the
quality and speed of communications.
First Expansion -Expansion of Production Capacity-1999
Installation of 08 PLCs: Tank Farm, Rectifiers, Electrolytic Filters, Larox Filter, acid dilution
station and three PLS pumping stations.

Segmentation of optical fiber ring for farther pumping stations(three kilometers)

Division of DH+ network into two rings, 10 PLCs in plant, and 13 PLCs in pumping stations and
others.

Creation of Ethernet network, installation of ControlLogix chasis by Allen Bradley as Gateway

to administrative LAN network to link with main plant PLCs and control room PCs (redundant
DH+)

Integration of PLCs from solvent extraction, tank farm and acid dosage to Administrative LAN
Ethernet network, improve control loops response.

Migration of supervision software RSView to RSView32

Change of control room PCs to Kayak - Hewlett Packard high performance Workstations
(Pentium III, HDD 8GB)
Control System- 1999
 Second Expansion - Income of Northwest Leacheable
Deposits and Establishment of Data Storage Plant -2001
Installation of 5 Foxboro DCS for Raff and PLS pumping systems to Northwest
leachable deposits.

Migration of supervision system RSView32 to Intouch by Wonderware.

Installation of 2 IBM servers for engineering and development.

Installation of IndustrialSQL by Wonderware like the first database of plant.

Creation of the first Industrial Ethernet network, independent from Administrative

network of SPCC.

Implementation of VLANs for coexistence of PLCs, DCSs, Servers and workstations.

Creation of a server room for CPUs and communication equipments.

Control System- 2001
 Modernization of Control System in Solvent Extraction
Area - 2006
SX Improvements

Hardware migration (PLC 5 - ControlLogix).

Hot Card Change without stopping the process (Hot Swap).

Implementation of processing and communication redundancy.

Installation of HART cards for field instrumentation.

Software migration (RSLogix5 5000).

Improvement of processing capacity and link to HMI.

Increase of communication speed from 10 to 100 Mbps.

Implementation of Controlnet network for redundancy and remote chassis

management.
 SX Control System
Before:

After:
 Modernization of Tank Farm Control System - 2008
Tank Farm Improvements:

Unification of data processing by installing only one PLC

ControlLogix for Tank Farm area.

Implementation of processing and communication redundancy.

Reduction of unscheduled process stoppages caused by electrical

disturbances or processing errors.

Reduction of maintenance and repairing costs.

Improvement of capacity and processing speed.

Implementation of Controlnet network for communication with I/O

cards from PLC 5
Tank Farm Control System
Before:

After:
 Modernization of Electrowinning
Control System Stripping Machine 2011
EW Improvements:

Hardware Migration (PLC 5 ControlLogix)

Reduction of implementation time by using converter modules (the first in Peru).

Implementation of processing and communications redundancy.

Software Migration (RSLogix5 - 5000)

Implementation of Asset Center System for management of Control system

programs and applications.

Implementation of Controlnet network for redundancy and remote chassis

management.
 EW Control System
Before After
 Control System- 2011
Industrial Controllers:
Hardware: 22 PLC 5, 12 ControlLogix, 02 SLC 5 and 04
DCSs FCP 270
Software: RSLogix 5, 500 y 5000 by Rockwell Software,
InFusion Platform.

Communication Networks:
Protocols: Ethernet, Controlnet, Devicenet, DH+ and HART.
Ways: mono/multimode Optic Fiber, UTP cable, WiFi.
Configuration: redundant.

Control Room, Human-Machine Interface (04 PCs) :

Hardware: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5530 of 2.40GHz, 3.48GB
RAM, 463 GB of HDD.
Software: Intouch by Wonderware - Invensys
Network: Industrial Ethernet
General LESDE Control System - 2011
 RESULTS
Greater operativity and reliability of plant.

Operational flexibility according to Online balance

SX TF EW stable operation.

Control and supervision system redundant.

Network Architecture open to new technologies.

Reduction of maintenance and repairing costs.

Reduction of time for diagnosis and failure solution.