Port Pirie Smelter Process Control System Upgrade

GPA was awarded the Process Control System Upgrade at Nyrstar Port Pirie Smelter as part of the Transformation and Redevelopment project. GPA was responsible for designing, installing and commissioning a state of the art Siemens PCS7 PCS/DCS Hybrid system. This is one of the largest control systems operating in Australia.

The overall Transformation project was worth approximately $600 million and was a major upgrade of the Port Pirie Smelter that has been in operation since 1989. Two new plant sections were incorporated including a new Top Submerged Lance (TSL) Furnace and a new Acid Processing Plant.

The Process Control System (PCS) was deployed on the Siemens PCS7 platform across three major switch rooms, each being controlled by a Siemens CPU410 controller. The choice of the Siemens system was made both on the ability to incorporate integrated safety in the one platform as well as the obvious benefits of integrated control system and operator display development, saving time when programming and offering plant operators a far more integrated and informative view into the operation of the control system.

The PCS system network design uses PROFIBUS DP for both operation of switch room equipment and field equipment over redundant fibre links to intelligent ‘Simocode’ smart relays and variable speed drives. The PCS will communicate with this equipment in order to obtain device status and make start/stop requests. In the field, PROFIBUS DP will be deployed on a redundant fibre ring to field panels to which local instruments and devices will be connected. These instruments will include a combination of local hardwired devices and smart PROFIBUS PA instruments. All reporting to their respective switch room CPU for control and reporting of status to operators.

On the plant bus network a variety of other devices are connected to the system for the reporting of status to the Siemens PCS7 operators over a variety of protocols including MODBUS TCP, SNMP, PROFINET, etc. All of this equipment has been incorporated into the final solution to be programmed, tested and commissioned by GPA’s own Systems Integration specialists and engineers.

GPA’s risk management team was been heavily involved in conducting Safety Integrated Level (SIL) assessments, Machine Safeguarding (MSG) assessments, developing Safety Requirements Specifications (SRS), conducting Burner Certification Assessments and conducting CHAZOP’s for the project team.