Implats is a leading fully integrated platinum group metals (PGMs) producer. The Group is structured around six mining operations and Impala Refining Services (IRS), a toll refining business.
The Challenge –
The Base Metals Refinery (BMR) plant has been in successful operation for many decades with extensive in-house operational knowledge – however, as with any process plant, operating states change, while the feed material is prepared from different sources that exhibit markedly different metallurgical and chemical behaviour. A project was therefore undertaken to develop digital twins of some key plant sections to help the Implats engineers improve understanding and operation. This digitalisation drive is part of a longer-term vision to use state-of-the-art Industry 4.0 digital tools to improve operations.
The Solution –
Dynamet Insights was tasked with developing application products (APPs) that the different plant section engineers could use on a day-to-day basis to devise better operating strategies and improve process efficiency. The individual projects relied on close collaboration between the plant experts at BMR and the digital domain experts at Dynamet Insights. Each APP has been developed by building the back-end first-principles framework, followed by their calibrations to the actual section plant behaviour by extensively using machine learning and other data-science techniques, before packaging the front-ends as compiled APPs for onsite implementation.
The Benefits –
The benefit of having these tools is that it forces the engineers to think deeply about the different operating strategies, and also by allowing them to test those ideas first on the digital plant, before making any physical or setpoint changes on the actual plant. It also provides a great data reconciliation tool because it has been designed to deal with the transient flows and complex chemistry behaviour of the actual plant.
– Karina Beukes, Plant Manager, Implats BMR Technical