Anglo American Quellaveco
PCS start-up and operation support
- Quellaveco, Peru
- Siemens PCS7 | Profinet as Fieldbus | VMWare virtualisation system
- Mining
Project Overview
In May 2022, we were engaged by Anglo American’s Quellaveco operations team to support the start-up of its concentrator. We were chosen to complete this work due to our expertise with the PCS7 system and our copper concentration process knowledge.
Working together with Quellaveco operations team, both concentrator production lines were started smoothly and reached full capacity in short time. Commissioning of the moly plant started in March 2023 and the first bag of moly was produced on the 5th of April 2023. Commissioning of the Coarse Particle Flotation (CPF) commenced on in January 2024. This project remains ongoing (as at March 2024).
Background
The Quellaveco copper mine is located 37km northeast of the city of Moquegua in South Peru, in the bed of the Asana River, 3,500 meters above sea level.
A USD5.5 billion investment, this mine is expected to have a mine life of 36 years and produce 100,000 tons of copper each year over the first 10 years.
Construction started in 2018 and in July 2022 Quellaveco announced its first production of copper concentrate.
Project Scope
Some key items in the scope of work included:
- Monitoring the status of the DCS control architecture (controllers, remote I/O, CFU, instruments, equipment and field switches).
- Proposing and configuring control strategies for the optimisation of the current process.
- Developing and updating the philosophies and narratives of control according to the optimisation of the process.
- Performing PCS7 integration and diagnostic tests with advanced APC control system.
- Performing PCS7 integration and diagnostic tests with the IAC Advanced Control Instrumentation System.
- Configuring and diagnosing OPC communication with advanced control instruments and advanced APC control systems.
- Proposing spare parts.
- Loop tuning training, virtualisation system and Profinet training.
- 24/7 control system support.
Project Challenges
The project team has encountered a number of challenges over the course of the project. These include:
- The Anglo American Quellaveco site is the first large mining project that has adopted Siemens PCS7 in Peru, meaning there is limited PCS7 experience onsite.
- The Plant Wide Control System (PWCS) was configured by another contractor and had a customised library which required familiarisation by the project team.
- The Mipac support team arrived onsite during peak testing time and had to work out issues, as well as prepare for acceptance of the systems, in limited time.
- Most of the operators onsite only speak Spanish and the language barrier can be very challenging.
- COVID19 and COVID-related restrictions affected the daily activities of Mipac team. For example, vaccination certificates were required by the client, COVID testing was compulsory prior to travel, masks were mandated onsite and social distancing was practiced. One of the project team members also caught COVID and was forced to leave site to isolate.
Results
The Mipac site team was able to compile some comprehensive handover checklists in a very short time which included:
- Virtualisation system health and performance check
- PCS7 project health and controller performance check
- Controller hardware configuration consistency check
- Network redundancy health check and test
These checklists ironed out most of the system/configuration issues and reenforced the configuration consistency across the plant.
The first production line (Line 2) started production in July 2022 and the second production line (Line 1) started production in September 2022. Both production lines reached full capacity in October 2022.
The moly plant started production in April 2023 and reached full capacity within the same month.
The CPF plant started ramp up in January 2024 and is undergoing optimisation.
Unique aspects of this project
This project was covered by the site team during the day and by a Brisbane-based remote support team during the night.
Thanks to the depth and breadth of experience and resources within the Mipac team – including in virtualisation systems, PCS7 systems, process knowledge, Fieldbus configuration etc. – the project team was also able to rapidly find solutions for the various challenges which arose throughout the project.
Finally, the fact that Mipac was able to form an experienced support team in which most members can speak fluent Spanish made big difference to the support work.
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