EcoSuite Application at a Mining Complex
- Annual recurring energy savings of $1.68M (11 month payback);
- Reduce GHG emissions (9400 CO2 tons/year) and energy consumption (105,000 Gj/yr);
- Monitor, control and manage the energy systems for long term sustainability.
- Increased employee comfort throughout the plant facilities;
Background
The Mining Complex which is located north of Quebec, has over 1,000 employees at the site, which includes an open-pit mine, an ore crusher and a concentrator, huge maintenance workshops, a large parts storage facility and a train loading system. Average yearly temperature of this location is -3 deg. C.
Mining Complex Overview
The complex comprises many buildings heated with 700 steam coils units distributed in two categories: air make-up and air heaters. The steam is produced at the steam plant in four (4) bunker C oil boilers and 1 electrical boiler. The main steam production (65.5%) is used for buildings heating heat.
Projects
The solution implemented consisted of a group of energy reduction measures to optimize the use of the existing air make-up and unit heaters and to lower energy consumption of some processes using steam. This was achieved by the addition of control equipment (valves), condensate equipment (steam traps, pump traps, safety drains), sensors and an EcoSuite supervisory control server. Thirty-seven (37) new control loops were implemented during this exercise.
To ensure recurrent savings on a long term basis, the control approach was designed with EcoSuite real time energy management system to continuously model, track and maintain the lowest possible energy and utility service costs. The EcoSuite system permits:
• the continuous control of energy costs and the creation of minimum achievable benchmarks or good practices for current production and ambient conditions;
• the identification at any time of the internal consumers (departments) that are not meeting their prescribed benchmarks;
• the generation of alarms for critical parameters in order to quickly re-establish the required operating conditions that comply with the desired benchmarks;
• the development of baseline and benchmark (good practice) references;
• the production of daily HTML reports for management that are made available through LAN/WAN.
Sample of the results
This graph represents the average steam consumption (before and after) for one of the areas under real time energy management control. A reduction of over 22% was achieved in this particular case.
Energy reduction after Real Time Energy Management (RTEM) control
References:
Available on request by contacting info@opnor.ca