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Increase productivity and uptime with advanced process control

When you’re coping with complex ore variability and high energy costs, you need a solution to help you maintain process stability and increase efficiency. Choose our advanced process control solution – and increase productivity, reduce energy consumption, and maximise uptime.

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Key benefits of advanced process control

  • Maximise Performance

    The ultimate goal of our advanced solutions is to increase the performance of your concentrator. This can be achieved in every stage of the process (crushing, grinding, flotation and others). We achieve this by implementing the best practices of your engineers and also our expertise, of over 20 years. A collaborative approach that pays dividends in very little time, with a seamless integration to your existing systems, and always with the maximum care for your equipment. When your process is running efficiently, wear is reduced so you can run for longer between maintenance outages.

  • Improve energy efficiency

    With an advanced process control system, you can optimize operations and reduce energy consumption. LoadIQ™ for SAG mill control is a prime example. By monitoring the material inside the mill, we can adjust the speed, such as slowing down when hitting too high on the shell. Often, after new liners are installed, the mill speed is ramped up too quickly, reducing liner life and wasting energy. Automatic control ensures optimum performance and energy efficiency.

  • Increase stability in your process

    Changes in your materials or in your equipment can throw your process off balance. But with advanced process control, these changes are compensated to create a consistent, stable operation. Our APC system analyses a wide range of signals and makes automatic adjustments to manage both your equipment and your process performance, resulting in improved operational efficiency, and up to 30% less variability in quality and process stability.

Advanced Process Control (APC)

FLS APC is designed to answer the challenges and priorities of today’s mineral processing plants. It’s a customisable and comprehensive system that can be used across the flowsheet to:

  • Increase performance
  • Stabilise processes
  • Manage and correct process disruptions
  • Minimise wear
  • Reduce operational and maintenance costs
  • Optimise mill load

This advanced process control software can measure all the inputs, model all the outputs and adjust your process parameters accordingly, in a proactive way, thus stabilising the process flow, balancing the circuit load, and protecting equipment, all while ensuring your product quality is protected.

This also enables you to develop a uniform operation strategy that outlines the best way to run the plant. Once this strategy has been established, training new operators becomes much easier.

Tailored solutions for every task

FLS APC software includes a suite of technologies based on model predictive control (MPC) and fuzzy logic rules that allows you to tailor functions to meet your unique requirements. The system uses the best control technology for each task – e.g.  an advanced Multi Input Multi-Output Model-based Predictive Controller (MPC) has proven to be successful to achieve the best possible grinding efficiency.

Add ons of advanced process control

  • LoadIQ

    In combination with APC, LoadIQ enables a 3 – 6% increase in mill productivity.

  • Remote support

    Choose from a selection of additional remote support services, including remote troubleshooting and asset optimisation.

  • Asset health & insights

    Tap into our digital capabilities and develop a data-driven predictive maintenance approach.

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Maintenance & service of advanced process control

Optimising a manufacturing process is not a one-time activity. It requires regular focus to maintain reliability and adapt to changing conditions. A continuous improvement approach can result in enhancing results over the long term.

We provide long-term support to help ensure efficient operations throughout the lifetime of the plant.

Frequently asked questions

FAQs for advanced process control

An advanced process control system utilises modelling and machine learning to automatically control equipment and processes, such as grinding. Because it makes automatic adjustments with speed and precision, it optimises efficiency and helps reduce downtime.

Yes, an APC system can upgrade any mine site and can be customised per each customer’s operation.

A Process Control System (PCS) in mining manages individual variables like temperature and pressure to maintain stable operations. In contrast, an Advanced Process Control (APC) system optimises multiple variables simultaneously using advanced algorithms and real-time data, leading to improved efficiency and performance.