Global energy management specialist Schneider Electric’s Ampla system integrator is assisting mines throughout Africa in improving their production and operational efficiencies, says the company’s mining, minerals and metals Africa cluster VP Wilhelm Swart.

Ampla is a mining production asset improvement solution developed in Australia in 2004 by software development company Citec, a business that Schneider Electric bought in 2006. This led to Schneider incorporating Citec’s product range into its own offering, including the Ampla solution.

Swart highlights that Schneider Electric has continuously improved the Ampla solution offering to its customers.

“In August, we were awarded a contract to supply uranium project developer Swakop Uranium’s $2.5-billion Husab uranium mine, in the Erongo region of central-west Namibia, with the Ampla solution,” he states.

Creamer Media’s Research Channel Africa reports that the Husab project currently ranks as the third-largest global uranium-only deposit and is “comfortably the largest uranium deposit in Namibia”.

Husab possesses uranium reserves of at least 280-million tonnes, grading at 518 parts per million for 320-million pounds of contained uranium oxide (U3O8).

A definitive feasibility study, prepared on the basis of a low-risk conventional openpit mine over Zones 1 and 2, delivered to the market in April 2011, indicated that about 15-million tonnes of ore a year could be delivered to a conventional agitated acid-leach plant to produce about 15-million pounds a year of U3O8 equivalent.

The current plan is to mine from two separate pits to maintain the 15-million-pound-a-year output over an estimated life-of-mine of 20 years.

Research Channel Africa reports that Swakop Uranium has completed almost 800 000 m of combined reverse-circulation and diamond-core drilling since April 2006, when the drilling programme started, which is an indication that the Husab project is “cementing its place as one of the largest resource drilling projects worldwide”.

Meanwhile, Swart tells Mining Weekly that Schneider Electric implemented the Ampla solution at diamond mining major De Beers’ South Africa-based Venetia underground diamond project and its Namdeb Diamond Corporation mine in Oranjemund, Namibia, in July.

He adds that, in May, the company commissioned Ampla at platinum mining major Impala Platinum’s base metals refinery in Springs, on the East Rand.

Technical Specification and Benefits
Swart highlights that Ampla allows for reliable high-speed data acquisition from multiple plants and business systems.

“The solution’s single configuration interface for all modules reduces learning and rework costs, and lowers the total cost of ownership,” he says.

Moreover, Ampla’s single real-time platform enables modules to interact and communicate with one another to better aggregate information for cross-functional reporting and key performance indicator (KPI) calculations.

Swart further notes that the solution’s modular deployment and single real-time platform allows for staggered deployment, resulting in incremental improvements, lower capital expenditure and higher return-on-investment in about 6 to 12 months’ time.

He adds that the system’s noninvasive approach leverages existing information technology infrastructure and business standards to reduce changes to the programmable logic controller or human-machine interface/supervisory control and data acquisition system, thereby reducing deployment costs and operational risk.

“Ampla’s business alert agent draws attention to information in a timely manner, which assists in increasing responsiveness,” states Swart.

He further points out that the solution significantly improves a mining plant’s production process efficiencies, as the solution enables operators to analyse a plant’s KPI in detail. This enables operators to “take considered and prioritised action”.

Swart notes that clearly delineating a plant’s operations helps eliminate equipment downtime, unscheduled maintenance and process bottlenecks while improving overall equipment effectiveness, accelerating time-to-market delivery and streamlining schedules.

He adds that Ampla’s tightly integrated analysis modules provide fast, incremental and measurable information, enabling miners to continuously improve plant operations.

“Since modules can be deployed incrementally across a single common platform, associated costs are shared across all modules.”

Swart highlights that, as it is based on the Microsoft Windows format, Ampla requires minimal training and enables customers to continuously extend and refine their system.