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TRITEC - COMSUR: Topkapi supervision solution for the Colquiri mine
COMSUR is the largest mining company in Bolivia, with mines over the entire Bolivian territory and in Northern Argentina. They extract metals such as zinc, lead, gold, copper, and silver. Colquiri is a COMSUR mine located at 4100 meters altitude, with a daily extraction rate of approximately 900 tons raw materials.
One of the criteria which led COMSUR to select TOPKAPI for their Colquiri project was its attractive pricing within the framework of the budget allocated for the installation of a full self-standing version on all driving stations of their CCM (Centres de Contrôle Moteurs).
The choice of a reliable and high-performance supervision solution
COMSUR also knew about the reliability and high performance of the Topkapi systems, installed by TRITEC on the water treatment and distribution facilities of Aguas del Illimani, supplying the city of La Paz with water. Another very important aspect in the use of Topkapi is the database viewing interface in the form of variables tables : easy and fast to implement, it enables developing, testing and operating an application, while leaving aside the design of the graphics synoptic diagrams, the major part of the integration work. This step, required with other supervisors, can be performed later with Topkapi, when the system is already operating under its main aspects (data viewing, remote control, alarms, archiving).
Colquiri mine: a tailor-made supervision system
The system installed at Colquiri comprises 3 local processing stations, located as close as possible to the extraction sites. Each is installed inside a facility protecting it from dust and sludge, and communicates using Modbus with the MCC to which it is connected. Two other stations are set inside MCCs, the first communicating via Modbus, and the second through Modbus Plus.
Each Topkapi station has full access to the process variables, i.e. viewing statuses and ON/OFF commands for over 150 motors (crushers, pumps, floatation cells), analog measurements (level, flow, weighing, variators, motor intensity, etc.), including through trend curves offering « fabulous » handling. The status of communication and each controller board is also monitored.
Topkapi also monitors several PID loops and the associated settings. One of the most important concerns the main crusher, for which the operator sets the flow value in terms of tons per hour, the regulation loop adjusting the motor speed according to this value.
As is virtually always the case with Topkapi, aiming at being an accessible system offering total control to the operators, the operating engineers were trained by TRITEC (who designed and implemented the system), in order to become self-sufficient for modifications and later upgrades of the Topkapi application.