Published in March 2006 Australian Longwall Magazine
The designer behind the software is Brisbane-based VRT Systems, which for the past 16 years has built and supported control and monitoring systems in many coal operations, including eight longwall mines.
VRT identified that while monitoring and control systems were common in other industries, for one to work properly in a longwall mine it needed to be tailored to the specific needs of this unique form of mining.
“The workforce and plant equipment are widely distributed and constantly on the move. As equipment moves and changes configuration, the monitoring and control system must be updated quickly to reflect the new state of the plant,” VRT’s project manager for SCADA Systems Ken Johnson said, adding longwalls were a much more dynamic situation than virtually any other form of process or manufacturing plant.
“This adds to the whole-of-life cost, and can also make it difficult to maintain a consistent implementation over the lifetime of the control system.”
Stewart McKain, IT coordinator for Anglo’s Central, Southern and German Creek mines, has experienced the benefits of a common user interface when VRT developed one for those mines in 1991. When he was also given responsibility for the architecture of the mine monitoring systems at the company’s new Grasstree, Bundoora and Aquila mines, he wanted to take this concept much further – to incorporate also the PLCs and OEM supplied software.
As a fourth generation underground coal miner, BMA Broadmeadow’s engineering manager, Steve Moore, has had his fair share of experience over the years trying to make systems delivered independently from a variety of OEMs work in harmony. Moore was one of the original instigators of this concept to avoid these problems.
Backed by Anglo Coal and BMA, VRT developed a packaged solution for longwall mining – LongView.
The LongView reference architecture is a framework designed to encourage consistent, multi-vendor supply of control system components and configuration services. This includes a SCADA system reference design and OEM supplier specification templates.
The product supports Rockwell ControlLogix, Citect SCADA, Joy Mining and DBT. VRT has future plans to get other OEMs on board, as well as conveyor manufacturers and more.
LongView’s equipment modules cover all aspects of longwall mining, including longwall equipment (such as roof supports, the shearer and AFC), conveyors, gas monitoring, ventilation, pumping, fixed and mobile substations and distributed control boards.
“Where equipment is mobile or changes regularly, the components contain the ability to be moved or updated online without changing the Citect SCADA graphics, recompiling or restarting the system,” Johnson said.
Because of its critical role in the operation of a mine, LongView has to achieve an extremely high uptime, particularly in relation to gas monitoring and other statutory requirements.
McKain, who has an extensive background in both mining and IT, has played a key role in some of the “high availability” aspects of the LongView design, including the automatic database replication for the system configuration and operations data.
The software also has ability for reporting – covering a standard set of longwall-specific reports to cover production, availability, event recording, ventilation and gas monitoring. As well as providing considerable input into the customer requirements for this important aspect of LongView, BMA Broadmeadow senior systems engineer Glenn Owens has also contributed to other features in Version 2 of the LongView system.
LongView also includes a web-based information portal that provides a central point for all staff seeking plant information. With assistance from Broadmeadow staff, it is planned to extend this to portable (PDA) devices in the near future.
VRT’s system will also support optional intelligent software modules, including Optimate’s Faceguard, CSIRO’s Nexsys, various business system integration middleware and industrial business intelligence software such as XempleX.
