A gold mine in Nevada, USA has been able to take advantage of wireless digital control for intelligent electric valve actuators on the water filtration plant.
The Newmont underground mine utilises Geotube dewatering technology to separate sediment from both ground and extraction process water. The filter systems, which are installed above ground, are fabricated from a woven material that is permeable to water while retaining solids and sludge. Excess water drains through small pores, resulting in effective dewatering of the contained material, which is then processed to extract the gold. The large scale filtration operation has been automated by the motorisation of 15 widely distributed inlet and isolating valves with Rotork IQ actuators and a Modicon PLC to supervise the operation of the plant.
A Rotork Pakscan P3 master station communicates with the Modicon PLC using Modbus TCP Ethernet protocol for the monitoring and control of the valve actuators over a wireless Pakscan network. All the actuators are in ‘line-of-sight’ of the Pakscan coordinator module, with the distance to each actuator ranging between 68m to 132m. The externally mounted coordinator is connected to the Pakscan P3 master station in the control room by a 15m cable.