FIELDBUS TECHNOLOGY ON A LARGE SCALE MINERAL PROCESSING PROJECT

Sudhir Jain1 , Jack Murray1

Manoj Pandya2

1
Emerson Process Management
2
Alcan Engineering Pty Ltd

Abstract: In 2004, Alcan decided to use fieldbus communication for process control
equipment on their AUD 2.8 billion expansion of the Alcan Gove Alumina Refinery in
Australia’s Northern Territory. To reduce project risk Alcan used elements of the PEpC
model developed by CII. (Construction Industry Institute).

This paper outlines Alcan’s implementation of fieldbus technology on the expansion

project and its use of a construction process known as pre-assembled modules (PAM) to
meet the aggressive schedule targets.
Copyright © 2007 IFAC

Keywords: Fieldbus, Digital communications, Planning, Process control, Project

management

INTRODUCTION work done in the previous five years. Over that

Alcan’s Gove bauxite mine and alumina refinery is
located at Nhulunbuy on the Gove Peninsula in the
east Arnhem Land region of Australia’s Northern
Territory. In 2004 Alcan made the decision to
expand the facility; the result was the AUD2.8
billion Gove Expansion Project (G3), intended to
increase the processing capacity of the company’s
Gove alumina refinery from 2.0 Mtpa to 3.8 Mtpa,
provide significant improvements in efficiency and
environmental impact over the existing plant, and
increase the company’s overall alumina capacity.
Engineering, procurement and construction kicked
off in Q4 of 2004. By Mid-March of 2006, 95
percent of engineering work was complete, 76
percent of the PAM fabrication and assembly work
was complete, and 54 percent of all on-site
construction was complete.
One of the contributing factor for the success of the
G3 project, however, depended to a great extent on
time Alcan had made the decision to shift its I&C
systems from the traditional 4-20 mA loops to
modern digital fieldbus technology.
This technological shift was made in stages,
beginning with conversion of a selected portion of
the existing facility, with the objective of gaining
both technical and managerial experience with the
new technology, mitigating risk, and finding the
best means of implementation.
THE ADVANTAGES OF FIELDBUS
TECHNOLOGY
Over the past few decades the processing industry
has come to understand the benefits to be realized
from digital communications for process
instrumentation and control. At one time process
communications was done primarily with 4-20 mA
current loop and similar systems; while useful, 4-
20 allows only one variable to be communicated
from each instrument to the control room or from
the control room to each actuator, and it requires
that each instrument or actuator be connected via a
separate pair of wires. In the 1980s a way was
found to piggy-back digital signals on top of the 4-
20 mA dc process signals. This method, called
Highway Addressable Remote Transducer
(HART), began a revolution in process
instrumentation; it allowed two-way
communication between field devices and control
room, remote diagnostics and even re-ranging
without physical examination. HART enabled field
devices to become intelligent.
HART does, however, have a significant limitation:
it still requires an individual set of wires for each
field device. The alternative is a fieldbus system, in
which all communication is in digital form and
multiple intelligent field devices are connected to a
single cable, each with its own digital address. This
saves considerable expense in cabling, I/O
cabinets, field junction boxes and more. In
addition, fieldbus-connected field devices can not
only be checked and diagnosed remotely, they can
be programmed via function blocks to re-range and
more; it is even possible to set up local control
loops between transmitters and actuators with the
role of the plant’s control system reduced to simply
monitoring and intervening in case of problems.
There are many of these systems, and while today
two families of protocols -FOUNDATION
Fieldbus and Profibus - dominate the process
control field, in 1999 when Alcan began assessing
its current and future instrumentation & control
requirements, there was considerable disagreement
as to which, if any, fieldbus protocols would come
out as a winner.
Alcan began to investigate the advantages and risks
of adopting fieldbus technology. Any solution
adopted would have to conform with the
company’s EHS -FIRST management policy and
not compromise environmental health and safety. It
would have to be compatible and integrate with
existing business management systems; and it
would have to provide at least as much
interoperability as the existing 4-20 mA system. It
was also important to obtain the in-house expertise
to ensure operational security, and to make sure
that I&C equipment would be compatible with
more than one fieldbus technology and still be
capable of integration with current systems.
The decision to employ digital fieldbus technology
on such a large scale was based on Alcan’s
substantial projected cost savings in engineering,
purchasing, installation, commissioning, and start-
up and predictions of on-going cost savings
associated with improved operations from
additional process and device diagnostics, and
reduced efforts to gather, assemble, and maintain
accurate, up-to-date calibration and maintenance
records.
After due consideration and study of existing
fieldbus installations Alcan settled on two bus
systems. For process measurement and control the
choice was FOUNDATION Fieldbus; for
intelligent discrete devices like motor control
centers and variable speed drives the pick was
Profibus DP. One advantage of these protocols was
that they are within public domain and controlled
by dedicated non-profit organizations, rather than
particular vendors.
Once the choice of bus protocols was made, the
next step was implementation at Gove, but rather
than rush in and install fieldbus throughout the
facility, Alcan worked incrementally on existing
facilities, with the intention of not only determining
if fieldbus would really do what was expected of it
but also to gain experience with the project and to
develop the appropriate practices for making
maximum use of it and preparing for
implementation on a larger scale. A small pilot
project with a small number of I/O was
commissioned with an eye to gaining experience in
all aspects of fieldbus technology before
proceeding to the next phase.
Experience with the various legacy I&C
equipment, and an extensive technical evaluation,
led Alcan to realize that the facility’s existing I&C
system was poorly suited to a fieldbus-equipped
world. Experience gained through the study of the
available fieldbus technologies led Alcan to choose
the DeltaV distributed control system (DCS) from
Emerson Process Management as a replacement for
the legacy systems, based on a combination of
Emerson’s experience in fieldbus, its ability to
provide support in Australia, and its ability to work
with the wide variety of fieldbus standards and
equipment.
Equally important was Alcan’s decision to engage
Emerson’s Fieldbus experts early in the project to
assist in the required segment design, training of
key personnel and development of standards &
procedures.
FIELDBUS IMPLEMENTATION
The pilot phase of fieldbus implementation at the
Grove facility was to be done in an area in which
little damage would occur if things did not work as
well as hoped. Accordingly, the company, after
appropriate study, chose 20 points to implement
fieldbus whose temporary loss would not cause
serious hazards, deliberately choosing equipment
from a number of different manufacturers in order
to obtain the greatest breadth of experience.
The results of phase 1 were positive, providing
company engineers with good training and
allowing them to develop the appropriate wiring
practices and standards as well as giving them
experience in commissioning and maintenance. It
also showed that the cost-saving promises of
fieldbus were indeed possible. The pilot plant
outcomes were instrumental in Alcan’s decision to
use fieldbus technology in the upcoming G3
expansion project, which would involve about 5000
field devices, plus variable-speed drives and on/off
motor control, for a total of about 15,000 I/O points
using the two fieldbus technologies previously
mentioned.
An important element of the use of fieldbus
technology in the G3 expansion project was the
development and use of new hazard analysis
procedures to ensure that failure of any segment of
the fieldbus system would not leave any critical
part of the plant unmonitored or uncontrolled.
Segment segregation practices were developed to
make sure that if one segment failed, readings from
other devices on a different segment would
continue.
Other areas reviewed as part of the CHAZOP
(Control Hazards and Operability) approach were
interface design for smart motor control equipment
plus design, installation, testing, and the
completeness of maintenance documentation.
USE OF PAMS
An important element of the G3 project was
modular construction through the use of pre-
assembled modules (PAMs). Assembled and fitted
out off-site, these plant modules included all
required electrical & instrumentation equipment
and were delivered to the Gove site fully pre-
commissioned and ready for installation.
Alcan’s Gove project assembled more than 300
PAM units, of which 36 were so-called
SuperPAMs, ranging in size from 200 to 3000
tonnes. These PAM and SuperPAM designs
Fig. 1: Fully fitted-out PAM.
Fig. 2. PAM being delivered to Gove
included process vessels and piping, pumps,
instrumentation and valves; all assembled and pre-
wired using fieldbus technology. PAMs were
assembled in Thailand and Vietnam and
transported to the northern coast of Australia.
The use of PAMs provided multiple benefits,
including improved safety, better control of project
schedule, better efficiency and quality due to use of
controlled factory environments to produce the
PAMs, improved EHS, and less need for relocating
large numbers of workers to the Australian remote
site.
COMMISSIONING AND TESTING
The combination of PAMs and fieldbus technology
with the DeltaV system facilitated testing and
commissioning, as each PAM was to a greater or
lesser extent a self-contained unit with all
components installed. This not only speeded
factory acceptance testing but made it simpler to
connect it to the DCS, both for testing and
commissioning and later for actual operation.
Alcan also developed a series of test procedures for
individual field devices, fieldbus segments, and
PAMs, and the appropriate record-keeping and
reporting mechanisms. The portable DeltaV system
was also used directly to test field devices and
fieldbus segments within PAMs as part of
commissioning.
THE PEpC MODEL
The traditional sequence followed in engineering
and construction projects is engineering,
procurement and construction, otherwise known as
the EPC model. It has worked reasonably well for
many years and for many projects, but has
significant shortcomings when it comes to projects
that involve high levels of technology, particularly
with complex control and/or communication
systems. The traditional model assumes that the
engineering staff chosen for the project is
sufficiently familiar with all aspects of all available
solutions to complex problems that it can select the
correct vendor, or at least generates appropriate
bidding specifications, before any procurement is
undertaken.
Unfortunately, the world of technology changes at
a dizzying pace, and it is difficult or impossible for
an engineering team to have the intimate familiarity
with every technological option to create a perfect
or even a practical specification; the result tends to
be errors in procurement and design, delays,
changes in scope, cost overruns and less-than-
optimal results.
In recent years a new model has been proposed.
Originated by the Construction Industry Institute
(CII) and called PEpC (pronounced Pepsi), it
involves bringing in the vendors of the high-tech
equipment and software that will be needed for the
project before any actual procurement is done. It
recognizes that the vendors of high-tech solutions,
as specialists in their respective technologies, are
more likely to have the in-depth knowledge
required for a successful project.
CII developed the PepC model — and opened its
membership to include suppliers — in large part
due to its realization that suppliers “can and should
play a significant role in the pursuit of CII goals.”
(Executive summary of ECC RS130-1 —
Reforming Owner, Contractor, Supplier
Relationships: A Project Delivery System to
Optimize Supplier Roles in EPC Projects).
In the new model procurement transactions for the
most critical elements of the project (indicated by
capital P) happen first and to a large extent define
the next step, the main body of the engineering
effort for the rest of the project (Capital E). This is
followed by procurement of the materials for the
rest of the project (small p), followed by the actual
construction (capital C).
Such a model not only takes advantage of the
expertise of the vendors, but it more closely aligns
with the increasingly-common practice of
distributed engineering and procurement, with
significant portions of any given project designed
and assembled off-site and then delivered as pre-
assembled modules (PAMs).
Another factor making the PEpC model attractive
is that it comports with the steadily-shrinking
supply of engineering talent available to both
engineering firms and their customers. Competitive
pressures have ensured that customers must
outsource engineering tasks for all but the most
rudimentary and routine work; it is no longer
economical to maintain strong engineering staffs,
and companies that attempt to do so can endanger
their competitive positions.
Although the PEpC was not formally adopted as a
project model for the execution of the G3 project,
the decision to choose both the fieldbus technology
and DCS supplier early, confirms the application &
benefits of the PEpC model. This made it possible
sufficiently to plan and develop the Gove project’s
detailed I&C network architecture so as to create a
robust, easily maintained, and tightly integrated
I&C solution.
BENEFITS
The use of fieldbus technology over conventional
4-20 mA technology reduced the number of
systems cabinets by 40 percent, I/O cards by 42
percent, marshalling cabinets by 93 percent,
terminations by 73 percent, and commissioning
time by 72 percent.
Fig 4 Digital Fieldbus Implementation Expected
Costs Savings.
The value proposition of soft ROI entities, such as
improved operations resulting from additional
process and device diagnostics, can be difficult to
quantify. However, according to a report by
independent industry experts at ARC Advisory
Group (www.arcweb.com), operations and
maintenance are the very areas where fieldbus
technology provides its greatest benefits. In other
words, the introduction of fieldbus technology
becomes the enabler to achieving a heightened
level of production effectiveness.
REFERENCES
Pandya, Manoj (2006), Digital Fieldbus
Implementation for Mineral Processing,
Presented at TMS 2006, March 15, 2006, San
Antonio, TX.
The Construction Industry Institute Reforming
Supplier Relationships Research Team (1998).
Reforming Owner, Contractor, Supplier
Relationships: A Project Delivery System to
Optimize Supplier Roles in EPC Projects,
Research Summary 130-1. Construction
Industry Institute, the University of Texas at
Austin.