The 203km Collahuasi copper concentrate pipeline system transfers slurry from the mine site at 4,300 meters above sea level to a ship loading facility at the port. The pipeline requires sophisticated, highly automated controls for pipeline start-up and shutdown.
Ausenco’s control systems specialty group was selected to design and develop the SCADA system; perform PLC and HMI programming; and (through a sub-contract with Valve Technologies) design and fabricate nineteen DC valve motor control panels.
The SCADA system controls the entire pipeline system, which includes a single pump station at the mine site (with two mainline pumps), two valve stations with choking, two block valve stations, two slack monitoring stations and one terminal station.
The SCADA uses Siemens PLCs and personal computers (PCs) running Wonderware Intouch™ software at the pump station and terminal to monitor and control the pipeline.
Communications are conducted between the PLCs and PCs via a redundant, high-speed fibre optic Ethernet network.
In addition, the pipeline system also includes our proprietary Pipeline Advisor™ software program for leak detection and process optimisation.