Client : Mittal Steel
Duration : 4 Months
Budget : R300,000
The N26 water plant is the main water plant that feeds all the mills at the Newcastle Steel site of Iscor (now Mittal Steel). The equipment was becoming out of date and needed to be upgrade before reliability issues affect the water supply to the mills. The Project scope was to upgrade the old Modicon 984 PLC's to new Quantum Processors but to retain the existing I/O. The existing Turbolink SCADA was replaced by Wonderware InTouch. The plant could not shut down for rewiring, thus the entire upgrade needed to be done live.
A shutdown at the N26 plant would mean Thousands if not Millions of Rand loss due to no production.
Challenges faced were among the following:
- Complex algorithms were used to control quench pumps that fed the mills.
- Commissioning Live!
Fault finding problems with the new system became easy and quick to solve. With the new introduced SCADA the operator was able to control and manage his/her plant more efficiently than in the past.
