"Outotec’s Fully Automated Smelter 2020 – The Vision, the Status and the Future,” by

Jani Jansson, Mikko Korpi, Robert Jonsen, Akseli Miranto, Peter Bjö rklund, Mikael Jå fs,
Joey Hoang, from Proceedings of the 2019 Conference of Metallurgists. Reprinted with
permission of the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum.

OUTOTEC’S FULLY AUTOMATED SMELTER 2020 – THE VISION, THE STATUS AND THE
FUTURE

*Jani Jansson, Mikael Jåfs, Tapani Keronen and Mikko Korpi

Outotec (Finland) Oy
Rauhalanpuisto 9, FI-02231 Espoo, Finland
(*Corresponding author: jani.jansson@outotec.com)

Robert Johansson
Outotec (Sweden) AB
Gymnasievägen 14, 93127 Skellefteå, Sweden

Joey Hoang
Outotec Pty Ltd
12 Kitchen Rd Dandenong, Victoria, Australia 3175

ABSTRACT

At the Copper 2016 conference in Kobe, Japan, Outotec introduced a vision for the year 2020,
wherein smelting would make use of four digital cornerstones: intelligent instruments, advanced process
control, improved information management and transparency of and access to data. Since then, this vision
coined the phrase “Fully Automated Smelter” with the mission promising a concept where no manual
actions from human operators would be needed during normal smelter operations. Replacing repetitive
physical work, collection and analysis of everyday production data has a great potential for further
automation and will provide productive ways to improve efficiency and safety of smelters in the future.
Therefore, a lot of emphasis has been put into developing solutions to automate these tasks and to move
people out of harm’s way. A lot of new equipment, systems and optimization tools are under development.
In addition, a lot of effort is going into developing dynamic process models and advanced control systems
to interface with the plant automation systems. The goal is to integrate all these concepts to meet Outotec’s
Fully Automated Smelter vision. This paper will cover these latest achievements toward this vision and
introduce the near-future of digital smelting.

KEYWORDS

Automation, Digitalization, Industry 4.0, Information management, Intelligent instruments, Process

control, Pyrometallurgy, Smelting

INTRODUCTION

As is well known already, the humankind is currently experiencing a change, extent of which is
broadly studied by the governmental, educational and industrial institutions and parties. The wellbeing and
quality of life have traditionally been improved alongside the developments in industrial production, which
is now about to enter its fourth revolution. Therefore, the current change is often described as fourth
industrial revolution, or industry 4.0 (or industrie 4.0, as named by Acatech, 2013) and can be considered
anything from small incremental development to a ground-breaking global reset that will affect everyone’s
lives. Many seem to agree, that the scale of change will indeed be big, even significantly bigger than the
three industrial revolutions before it (Pellini, Weyrauch, Malho & Carden, 2019; Geissbauer, Vedso &
Schrauf, 2016; Jansson, Bjorklund, Lahtinen, Heinonen, Jafs & Fagerlund, 2016).

The fourth industrial revolution is expected (and experienced) to be based on the cyber-physical
systems and the exponential development occurring in the field of digitalization. Thanks to earlier
developments like the central processing unit (CPU), personal computer (PC), data storage technologies,
internet, smart phones and increased data transfer speeds, the amount of existing data is increasing
exponentially. It is said, that more than 90 % of the available data is born only within the last two years
(Wall, 2014; Marr, 2018). This increasing amount of data combined with the exponentially increasing
network bandwidth and CPU processing power, and the development happening in the field of robotics and
cognitive computing (based on artificial intelligence and signal processing) will allow more educated,
information-based decisions quicker than ever before. In this respect it is not surprising that studies have
found the highest potential for further automation in the mining industry in near future being in the
repetitive or predictable physical work, data collection and data processing (Chui, Manyika & Miremadi,
2016). Looking at the data available from US Bureau of Labor Statistics, it can be estimated that in the
United States’ mining sector alone roughly 160 million hours are used to these tasks, which equals roughly
5 billion USD in salaries annually (Jansson, 2017).

The magnitude and effect of the fourth industrial revolution can also be studied (to some extent,
by assuming linear development) by looking back into the history and studying the previous development.
After inventing the mechanization and the electricity, the production processes were controlled manually
by field operators, for example by adjusting valves and engine RPMs. Analog control systems allowed
controlling the key parameters from a distance with discrete controllers (such as PID-controllers), but
building process-wide controls with these methods often resulted in very complicated circuit designs and
electronic components. Furthermore, introduction of digital, computer-controlled, control systems in the
late 1960’s allowed including calculated variables (e.g. recoveries, assays, flows) directly in the control
system and made understanding, operating and maintaining the systems simpler over to analog control
systems (Cooper & Mattila, 1975). The progress around third industrial revolution is illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Smelting in 1940’s as illustrated by Kuisma (1989) (on the left) was still quite manual work.
Introduction of digital control systems such as Proscon 103 (on the right) made it more simple to
understand, operate and maintain larger, process-wide control systems (Cooper, 1975).

The seasonally unadjusted data from EU by Eurostat shows that the amount work done in the
mining and quarrying industry has indeed decreased drastically (together with amount of people employed)
from the 1980’s, while the production has remained roughly on the same level. Unfortunately the data
related to the working times and salaries were available only starting 1993, but the data still represent long
enough period to show the trend even over few cycles. This development is illustrated in Figure 2.
Figure 2. EU data on the mining and quarrying sector’s production. The solid lines are direct data from EU
and plotted to primary Y-axis (left) whereas the dotted lines are calculated and plotted to secondary Y-axis
(right). The hours worked have decreased significantly while the production has decreased less
significantly

From Figures 1 and 2, it is obvious that already the third industrial revolution had a great effect on
the mining and quarrying industry in EU, resulting not only in decreased amount of manual work used, but
also in better salaries for the employees. Clearly the third industrial revolution has allowed the work force
to move to other industries and the societies to be less dependent on manual labor (similar to industrial
revolutions before it). Interestingly the real salaries in the industry have remained roughly on a same level
during the whole observation period, with noticeable increase after 2015. This suggests a possible job
saturation, increase in the competition over the work force and/or that the work done is becoming more
complex (and often less physical). Now it can only be guessed what kind of change this next industrial
revolution will introduce.

FULLY AUTOMATED SMELTER (FAS) 2020 VISION

Even when assuming linear development (following the third industrial revolution) it is becoming
more and more obvious that big changes will be evident also in the mining and metals industry. It has also
been claimed that the mining and metals industry is lagging behind in development and innovative thinking
versus the more developed sectors such as oil and gas industry (Mitchell et al., 2014). Combining this with
the finding that a lot of time in the mining industry is still being used for predictable physical work (Chui et
al., 2016), it can be argued that the industry is still somewhere between the third and fourth industrial
revolution. Outotec’s Fully Automated Smelter (FAS) 2020 vision aims at getting the smelting industry to
catch up and take it into the frontline of digitalization and industrial production. The FAS 2020 vision is as
follows:
 “By 2020 we can offer a smelter concept, where no manual actions by the process operators are
needed under normal operating conditions. This modular solution will significantly improve the
safety, efficiency and productivity at the smelter.”

It has also been argued that the means for developing will change in the future, and that the fourth
industrial revolution will not be an outcome of engineering, but instead one of collaboration and co-
creation (Pellini et al., 2019). This means that not only the available technologies will be new and require
attention, but also the current ways of working will be challenged. Engineering new innovative
technologies is not likely in the field of digitalization, but rather the innovations need to be created in
deeper collaboration between different parties in the industry. Developing digital solutions requires the
data, digital and metallurgical (i.e. the domain) capabilities and the right technologies (such as ICT
infrastructure and software platforms) and ways of working (co-creation model, agile development, design
sprints etc.) in order to maximize the potential for success. From the industry-wide development
perspective it is not feasible for each party to secure all these capabilities in-house, hence the openness and
co-operation need to be nurtured. At Outotec a lot of effort has not only been put to the development of the
technology, but also to find the right ways of collaborating and working together.

Next, the four corner stones of Outotec’s FAS 2020 vision are introduced in more detail with
some case examples from real life. These cornerstones are not only expected to improve the productivity at
the smelters, but at the same time to also deepen the collaboration within the industry and to have a
significant impact on health, well-being and safety of the workers.

INTELLIGENT INSTRUMENTS: SAFETY THROUGH AUTOMATION

Getting all the necessary measurements from the smelter is the first step when aiming for a Fully
Automated Smelter. As is well known, the measurements need to be foremost reliable, and the measuring
devices themselves robust enough so that they can keep on measuring without extensive maintenance. The
recent developments in the fields of artificial intelligence, sensor technologies and computing power enable
more and more things to be measured with less and less costs. Implementing new intelligent instruments
providing new insights to the process and equipment conditions is not anymore limited by the technical
method of the measurement itself, but more by the engineering challenge of making these sophisticated.
and often sensitive, devices stand the harsh environment of a smelter. It does not make much sense to build
advanced process control either if the foundation (the measurements) are not expected to function 24/7.
Despite the challenge, utilizing new methods for digitizing existing quantitative or qualitative
measurements is worth the effort - especially in cases where current objective measurements do not exist,
or the objectivity of the measurement relies heavily on the experience of the process operator.

Outotec’s experience in engineering and manufacturing and the vast experience both in smelting
and automation provides a good starting point for developing intelligent instruments. This development
aims not only to introduce new process insights to increase potential for further automation, but first and
foremost to increase the safety by reducing predictable physical work near the high-risk areas such as
furnace roofs, tap holes and such. Previously more of such intelligent instruments were presented in
Copper 2016 by Jansson et al. (2016) and they are all considered key pieces also in reaching the FAS 2020
vision. Next, some of the other developments in the field of intelligent instruments are presented.

Tap hole automation

One of the major risks related to operation of pyrometallurgical vessel is related to the tapping of
metals and slags from the furnace. This process traditionally involves the use of oxygen lancing to open the
tap hole and clay plugs to close them. The industry knows a variety of practices to execute these, either
manually or in a semi-automated way as well described in earlier literature, e.g. by Nelson and
Hundermark (2014). It has been estimated that up to a third of incidents causing various degree of harm to
operators at smelters happens at the tap hole area. This is of course not only due to molten materials and
humans coming in close contact of each other, but also due to launders and piping for the cooling of both
tap holes and launders being in the same work area as the operator. It is not uncommon that tap holes are
damaged due to poor operation, e.g. through burning of tap hole blocks using oxygen lancing or runaway
melts as a result of not being able to plug the tap hole either by hand or by machine.

The advantages of automating this task are thus abundant; increasing personnel safety, extending
time between tap hole maintenance, avoiding lost production due to tap hole operational failures to name a
few. The possibilities to solve this challenge are of course many but even though automation has been
around for a while none of the previously introduced methods have reached wide adoption in the copper
industry. Perhaps the reason for that has been that the industry generally tries to automate the practices of
the human operator rather than looking into the enablers in new technology, e.g. intelligent instrumentation
and data analytics.

MouldSense

In copper anode casting, the mould and its condition, shape and alignment have a great impact in
the quality of the final anodes, which affects the actual performance of the whole smelter. Typically, these
characteristics of the mould are visually assessed by the operator and as such the measurement is highly
subjective and prone to human error. Even with the experience, the outcome of the assessment can vary
greatly from inspection to another, which makes it an ideal application for an automated measurement such
as Outotec® MouldSense. MouldSense is based on a combination of 3D laser scanning, 2D imaging and
machine vision algorithms, which are implemented on Outotec ACT and connected to the anode casting
wheel automation system (for triggering the measurement and tracking the casting wheel position / mould
number currently being analyzed). The main user interface of MouldSense is illustrated in Figure 3.

Figure 3. The main screen of MouldSense user interface shows the summary of the mould status and the
pictures of the latest measurements with additional details. The mould number represents the mould’s
position in the anode casting wheel and is as such different from mould-specific ID

The MouldSense can be used to measure and detect things such as the push pins missing, or too
high positioning of these or if there is debris, anode lugs or other foreign objects in the mould. It can also
accurately detect mould deformation and cracks. This saves time and effort in manual work such as mould
leveling and provides objective, reliable results for minimizing the amount of anode rejects and for
optimizing mould maintenance tasks and reducing casting shop downtime (due to unnecessary mould
installation and leveling). Improved anode quality also results in improved performance of the tankhouse
and decreases the amount of rejects from anode preparation machine.

LanceMotion

In the Ausmelt top-submerged lance (TSL) furnace the lance movement is a function of the bath
conditions the performance of the process. Monitoring of the lance movement to control the process is
often one of the first things taught to new process operators. The lance movement is monitored visually,
and even subtle changes to the expected movements can mean the difference between a successful
operation or disaster. To be successful, the process operators need to be paying constant attention however
even when they do these changes are not always so easy to detect. Such a task can be considered tedious
and the results are always subjective based on training and experience. This is an ideal starting point for the
transition to intelligent instruments such as LanceMotion which is based on a sophisticated motion sensor
that is attached to the lance head. The motion sensor allows for continuous tracking of the lance movement
with the information able to be analyzed on Outotec’s ACT platform. From there, the results are shown to
the process operator along with the suggested corrective actions (if necessary), e.g. if the movement of the
lance is currently too weak, the recommendation to lower the lance in order to properly submerge the lance
into the bath is given. The principles of operation on an Ausmelt TSL lance are illustrated in Figure 4.

Figure 4. The measuring principle of LanceMotion on the left, and the installation on an actual Ausmelt
TSL on the right

In addition to the increased safety aspects, LanceMotion also gives the potential for the process
operators to gain better insights and to make more informed decisions. It also supports the learning of
junior operators by giving objective measures rather than subjective assessments to gauge their
performance. The next step for the LanceMotion development is to be able to quantify more information
from the process such as the lance wear or bath chemistry through implementing new features to the
existing data analysis algorithms. There is also potential to apply the motion sensing technology in
LanceMotion to other areas around the plant such as the converter aisle to increase the safety and operating
performance in those areas.
 ACCESS TO DATA: RESPOND FAST AND INCREASE ONLINE AVAILABILITY

Nowadays at the modern smelters the challenge is not so much in getting the measurements from
the process and equipment, but to handle this data efficiently and quickly so that necessary actions can be
made at the right place at the right time. Quite often an equipment failure for example could have been
prevented beforehand by looking into the data manually, but no alarm limits were implemented, or single
measurement was not compared with other measurements and multivariable models predicting the potential
failure were not implemented. As per the authors’ experience, such failure detection currently relies on
someone using extensive amount of time to manually collect and analyze large amounts of information
coming from the field instrumentation. These empirical experiences are also well aligned with the findings
of different studies such as the one by Chui et al. (2016).

The solutions introduced in this section aim to reduce the time required for data collection and
analysis, and to provide refined data for quicker response. Such refined data is also easier to share
horizontally and vertically in the value chain, which for example can improve the spare part delivery times
and therefore decrease the down time often caused by unexpected shutdowns.

Equipment health indicators

Ensuring that the availability and performance of any key process equipment remains on a high
level is crucial when optimizing the smelter’s overall production. Unfortunately, even the highest-quality
equipment can and eventually will fail if it is not maintained properly. The availability of the equipment
can be increased significantly with efficient and well-planned maintenance. Traditionally good
maintenance practices have relied on ensuring good availability of spare parts, high capability of the
service or maintenance technicians and fast response times in case of a failure. With novel digital solutions,
such as Outotec Equipment Health Indicators, it is possible to improve the key process equipment
availability even further. Equipment Health Indicators provide automatic reports based on the Key
Performance Indicators (KPI) in a visual format that can be accessed on multiple devices also on the go, as
is illustrated in Figure 5. The application also allows the relaying of essential warnings to right people at
the right time without causing excessive information overload (Outotec.com, 2018).

Figure 5. Outotec Equipment Health Indicator visualization and notification application can be accessed
from multiple different devices and provides refined data for intuitive decision-making

Outotec Equipment Health Indicators not only give good visibility on the current condition of the
equipment, but also allow predicting the failures to preschedule correct maintenance more efficiently. The
information is once again in a refined and intuitive format so that the conclusions regarding the potential
corrective actions and their optimal schedules can be planned easily and efficiently. Currently the Outotec
Equipment Health Indicator application is available for Outotec’s Courier on-line elemental analyzers, but
the next steps in FAS 2020 initiative is to follow the same approach and enable such indicators for smelters
too. Future development will also aim to further increase the integration of the application with existing
customer systems. This way it would be possible to provide more sophisticated inputs and recommended
actions automatically for example to Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS) and
alarm systems.

Furnace lining monitoring system

Refractories are used in pyrometallurgical vessels such as flash smelting, TSL or electric furnace
to increase the campaign times of the furnace. The lifetime of the refractory is often equal to the campaign
time obtained from the furnace. Therefore, when operating such furnaces, it is of great importance to pay
close attention to the refractory condition. This can be done with monitoring the cooling water system with
solutions such as Outotec® Sentinel as presented for example by Jansson, Pesonen and Vaajamo (2015),
but sometimes it can be preferred to obtain direct temperature measurements from specific areas of the
refractory itself. Outotec Furnace Lining Monitoring System (FLMS) comprises thermocouples that are
installed in the furnace wall at different depths and connected to the plant automation system. From the
plant automation system, the measurements are connected to a FLMS server PC that analyses the data and
represents the calculation results from the lining model. The user interface of the FLMS is illustrated in
Figure 6.

Figure 6. The isotherm view of the Furnace Lining Monitoring System shows the modelled temperature
distribution of the furnace’s cross section. The position from where the cross section (shown in the bottom
left corner) is taken can be easily altered by manipulating the side cross section and top cross section lines
from the user interface

The information from the Outotec Furnace Lining Monitoring System can be used to optimize the
heat distribution (by altering charging practices, the use of auxiliary burners etc.) and to monitor the actual
thickness of the refractory in the furnace automatically. This improves the furnace availability and
maximizes the refractory’s lifetime while reducing the risk of unplanned shutdowns and emergency repairs.
Also, on the long run the information provided by FLMS can be combined with process information and
analyzed for studying things like causalities and correlations with refractory wear, which helps in
understanding how the different processing practices affect the refractory and furnace campaign times.
 EDUCATED DECISION MAKING AND DIGITAL METALLURGY

Sometimes it is not enough to only have a good visibility on the current condition and
performance of the smelter, but to analyze multiple possible scenarios for example with different feed
materials and their effect on process performance — sometimes these might not have been experienced
before either, making the evaluation hard without proper reference data. Most often such analysis needs to
be done rather quickly and ad-hoc, and perhaps even when on the go. Dynamic process models based on
first principle methods are a good and well-known solution for such a need, but these have traditionally
required a laptop or desktop computer running a dedicated simulation software such as Outotec HSC.
These sophisticated models with multiple features might be hard to modify to match current process
conditions without very deep understanding of the model itself. Also, if many persons are tweaking the
same model, it can also be easy to break the model (sometimes even beyond fixing) causing everyone to
fall back to some of the older backups. Next in this section, an efficient solution solving such issues is
presented.

Exploring different processing scenarios and their effect on process performance

As mentioned, sometimes the dynamic process simulations can require too heavy configuration
work and deep know-how for a quick task of exploring and planning different processing scenarios. In
order to simplify this task, and to allow users with varying levels of expertise to efficiently evaluate
different scenarios and to study causes and effects of different parameters, more intuitive and streamlined
user experience is required. Quite often this is not accepted with the expense of losing details and features
in the simulation or model though. Outotec’s HSC and ACT platforms can be used to build such a modular
solution that ensures the intuitive user experience without sacrificing on the level of detail and accuracy of
the simulation model itself. In such an approach Outotec HSC provides all the necessary tools for building
pretty much any kind of dynamic or steady-state models, whereas the ACT is used for reading and writing
values from the HSC-based model, for programming additional features, for enabling connectivity to
external data sources and for generating intuitive web-based user interfaces. Recently this approach has
been successfully demonstrated in smelting at Outotec for example in building a steady-state plant-wide
process explorer for a copper smelter, and in building a quick process value estimator (estimating
production costs and profits with the possible feed mixes) for a TSL smelting process.

Figure 7. Example of an intuitive user interface of an Outotec AUSMELT TSL simulator that allows
manipulating a process model directly from the web browser
 The strength of this modular approach is also that any new features such as production cost
information and estimations, value generation and optimization models, and such can be implemented
either on the ACT or HSC, depending on the preference and skills of the user. The web-based user
interfaces allow these tools to be available on multiple platforms and in practice to as many users as
necessary. As the web user interface is the only interface to the model on the client’s side, it is also possible
to have non-experienced users to use and learn from the tool without having to fear that something would
break in the HSC model running in the backend for example.

ADVANCED PROCESS CONTROL: REDUCE ERRORS BY AUTO-CONTROL

One of the corner stones in extracting benefit from digitalization is reducing the sub-optimization
of processes by mitigating operator errors and discrepancies between shifts’ operating practices. Thereby.
serious effort in FAS 2020 initiative has been put into developing advanced process control tools.
Statistical models based on operational data have been used for a long-time already but the introduction of
first-principle modelling into the applications has provided great benefits for the smelters and the operators.
Statistical models are as good as the history they rely on and thus they are often error-prone when operating
outside the known domain. For this reason, a combination of physical simulation and empirical experience
has proven it is fit for daily operations. As a good example of this is the suite of Process Advisors
developed for the pyrometallurgical copper processes by Outotec. Through semi-automatic and even fully
automatic control of the processes large improvements into process stability have been witnessed by
Bjorklund (2015), e.g. substantial stabilization of matte grades and improved direct recoveries to matte,
which improves down-stream processing and reduce the need for slag treatment. Excellent process models
can be built using the Outotec HSC-Sim as a tool and combining these with flexible control platforms such
as Outotec ACT enable building state-of-the-art advanced process control for both continuous and batch
processes.

Electrode Management System (EMS)

One example of utilizing advanced process control to make the everyday operations easier is the
Outotec Electrode Management System (EMS), which optimizes one key process variable in the electric
furnaces: the electrode slipping. By monitoring process variables from the plant automation system such as
temperatures (e.g. roof and off-gas temperatures), electrical parameters such as resistance and electrode
currents, electrode weights and charge properties the EMS provides suggestions for the process operator on
how to optimize the electrode management. The EMS is built on Outotec ACT, which makes the solution
scalable, i.e. it can also be implemented as a part of a wider smelter automation solution. By closing the
loop and allowing the EMS to also make control actions without the process operator’s interaction it can be
easily implemented in practice as a part of FAS 2020 concept. The main view of EMS’s user interface is
illustrated in Figure 8.
 Figure 8. Main view of the Electrode Management System (EMS). The system monitors key process
variables and provides suggestions for control actions to optimize electrode slipping

The benefits of EMS are analogical to most of the advanced process control solutions benefits.
The system can monitor multiple parameters simultaneously and tirelessly, and if required, make
continuous control actions. The current installations of EMS are running in an Advisor mode, where the
control actions need to be approved by human operator, but the trend for the future also at the smelters
seems to be to aim towards closing the control loops for quicker and more constant control.

Plant-wide optimization

The ultimate goal for the advanced process control in the FAS 2020 vision is to enable true plant-
wide and online optimization. Currently the unit processes are often stabilized and optimized individually,
meaning that the unit process models and controls are not interlinked, leaving the communications
regarding the unit process’ states and restraints for traditional log books, radios and phones - method. This
can lead to sub-optimal overall performance of the smelter as for example the information on new restraints
of a single unit process might come late and cause sub-optimal control actions at the other unit processes.
Also, some of the restraints might affect things such as the smelter’s scheduling (flash smelting furnace
tapping, PSC blowing, slag cleaning furnace charging, etc.) that might be hard with traditional methods to
solve and to communicate quickly without introducing additional delay or safety buffers between different
tasks.

Such plant-wide optimization is currently being developed within Coordinating Optimisation of

Complex Industrial Processes project (COCOP). The COCOP project is a European project under the
Horizon 2020 framework and the SPIRE initiative. The approach is based on model-based, predictive,
coordinating optimization concept, which has two main levels. The higher level (called the coordinative
level) calculates main parameters such as the optimal flash smelting furnace matte grade and the batch
process schedules, whereas the lower level models (Outotec Process Advisors) are responsible of
controlling the unit processes. Both of these levels will contribute to optimization targets of the whole
smelter for example by trying to increase production, campaign times and metal recovery and to decrease
emissions (COCOP, n.d.).

One essential feature of such plant-wide optimization solution is to optimize both the continuous
and batch processes. In COCOP approach this is handled by the coordinative level which utilizes models
such as mixed integer linear programming (MILP) for optimizing the Peirce-Smith Converter (PSC) and
anode furnace scheduling. The unit process models are responsible for detailed modelling of the relevant
elements and the heat balance, and for providing state estimations and constraints for the coordinative
level. This principle is illustrated in Figure 9.

Figure 9. Two-level plant-wide optimization concept of the COCOP project as illustrated by Korpi,
Suominen, Jansson, Pihlasalo and Vilkko (2019). The approach consists of a higher-level coordinative
controller and lower level unit process models, the Outotec Process Advisors. With such approach the
complex optimization challenge of a smelting process can be solved

This layered and modular approach allows optimizing the whole smelter without creating single
complex model that might be hard to maintain and adapt for changing process and equipment conditions.
All the data between the separate modules is transferred via the same message bus allowing the system to
be scalable in the future too as for example more listeners for the same data can be added easily. The
Process Advisors can also be used with or without the higher-level coordinative controller, in which case
they will “just” stabilize and optimize the individual unit process without the visibility to the overall
coordinative optimization. According the current plan the COCOP approach will be tested in industrial
scale during 2019.
DISCUSSION

The authors still strongly agree with the claim done three years ago in Copper 2016 - the future of
the smelting will indeed be digital. The latest developments in the industry seem to support the future
projection of continued increase in the productivity and the level of automation. Risks and consequences of
an aging work force can be managed without sacrificing the safety of the people or sustainability of the
smelter by improving the level of automation and thus taking the operators out of the harm’s way and
mitigating the human errors. The examples presented in this article are just one of the results related to
Outotec’s FAS initiative, but there is also still quite a bit to do before the vision can be considered
successfully achieved. Thus far it has been challenging to find partner smelters for testing and co-
developing these concepts further into working solutions, but it seems that also the smelters are now
getting more and more ready for taking the next big step in the means of fourth industrial revolution. We
expect the first FAS to see daylight relatively soon after 2020, and it will take the productivity and
efficiency of the industry to a whole new level. The next few years will indeed be exciting times in the
whole smelting family!
CONCLUSIONS

The smelting industry is clearly heading towards more digital future together with the fourth
industrial revolution. The Fully Automated Smelter 2020 vision provides a clear path for future
development of digital technologies at Outotec. The concept of removing the need for continuous manual
work from the furnace areas during normal operating conditions aims to improve the safety and process
performance at the smelters. During the last years lot of development has been done in the fields of
intelligent instrumentation, advanced process control and in implementing more intelligence into data
analysis and process modelling. Outotec is in a unique position to design and deliver both hardware (based
on the experience in engineering process technology) and software (based on the two in-house digital
platforms Outotec HSC and Outotec ACT) for digital metallurgists of the smelting industry. The work is
not unfortunately yet complete, and deeper collaboration and co-creation with operators in the industry is
the preferred way to speed up development even further.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors wish to acknowledge the support and enthusiasm of our customers and all internal
and external partners involved so far in the work towards a Fully Automated Smelter, which has proven
valuable in progressing digitalization at smelters. Additionally, parts of the work presented in this article
have received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under
grant agreement No 723661, Coordinating Optimization of Complex Industrial Processes (COCOP)

project.

Any statements herein reflect only the author’s views. The European Union is not liable for any
use that may be made of the information contained herein.
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