Design And Development Of Computer Control System In Slurry Preheating Process

High-pressure acid leaching (High Pressure Acid Leach, abbreviated as HPAL) is the core technology in hydrometallurgical process. Slurry preheating process is the first process in high-pressure acid leaching and the performance of its process parameters will directly affects the production quality and security of the follow-up process With the development of manufacturing technology of high pressure refining equipment and automation control technology, high-pressure leaching technology receives more and more attention and application among hydrometallurgy process, to becoming the main trend of nickel smelting process in the future. In this paper, aiming at the control features of slurry preheating process in nickel and cobalt smelting process with high-pressure acid leaching, such as multi variables, strong coupling, slowly varying and so on the complex features,designs and developments the computer control system of the pulp preheating process.Based on a nickel-cobalt smelting project, combining the characteristics of pulp preheating process, this paper designs and developments computer control system of the pulp preheating process using two control layers including process control and process monitoring, and verify the control effect with experiment means. The detail works are as follows.1. Summarizes the current situation of pulp preheating process control system and pulp preheating process modelling; analysises the properties and control difficulties of pulp preheating process. Based on this, builds the dynamic level model of preheater in pulp preheating process and carries out model verification. As strongly coupling among, this paper develops the decoupling control strategy of the level of three slurry preheaters.2. Designs computer control system of the pulp preheating process using two control layers including process control and process monitoring, including the control system architecture design, functional design and control strategy design. The process control layer completes the logical control and loop control, the process monitoring layer is used to achieve system management, operation management and production reporting management and so on functions. In a word, the control system achieves the automation of process control and management by implementing information and functional integration of process control and process monitoring. 3. Against a specific smelting project of nickel and cobalt using high-pressure acid leaching technology, this paper develops computer control system of pulp preheating process using HoneyWell EpksR310DCS system, specifically including hardware configuration and architecture, monitoring picture software configuration, control strategy configuration, system configuration and so on. Software development rules also are described in detail. Finally, using our laboratory’s simulation system for high-pressure acid leaching process verifies that the control system is effective and feasible.