Elkem Metals Alloy: Major Smelter Sets Production Records After Implementing New Computer System

By Phillip G. Richardson, IT Manager, Elkem Metals

Elkem's Alloy, West Virginia plant produces nearly
30 percent of all the silicon metal consumed in
North America.

Tucked into the West Virginia hills and along the New River about 45 minutes southeast of Charleston is the small, unincorporated town of Alloy. It is home to the largest silicon metal smelter in North America. The smelter operates around the clock, every day of the year. It produces 360,000 to 380,000 pounds of high-grade silicon metal a day, which represents nearly 30 percent of all industrial and commercial demand in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Since a new computer system was installed in the mix house, production records have been set on each of our five furnaces. We could not have set these new records without a solid flow of material through the furnaces, and the new MODCOMP system that assured us of that uninterrupted flow.

In the autumn of 1996, we transferred our mix house process system from a proprietary operating system, MAX IV, to REAL/IX operating system, MODCOMP's real-time implementation of the UNIX System V operating system for 88K-based REAL/STAR platforms.

Object-oriented touch screen is key to successful real-time process control in the mix house of Elkem Metals'Alloy, West Virginia facility. Steve Bainer, mix house dispatcher, monitors process.

We had two primary reasons for the switch: we did not have the personnel to modify the software on the old system by adding features or equipment; and the new system improves our mix house control and eliminates delays without any outages in the system. This is important to us because we have no redundant computer system.

The raw material in our smelting process is dirt-nearly 2 million pounds a day. We start out with rock, coal and woodchips and we make high-grade, high-purity silicon metal that goes to chemical, consumer product and electrical and electronic manufacturers. We must maintain a stable flow and consistent blending of materials into the furnaces to achieve stable performance and efficiency. Today, the combination of the REAL/IX operating system and application software written by AccessWare controls the mix house, where the smelting process begins with the blending of material. This blending is one of the most significant aspects to our process.

Our process is controlled by a fusion of old and new technologies. Some tasks are accomplished through manual processes. For example, an operator in a huge front-loader tractor literally pushes raw materials into the furnaces. At the other end of the technology scale, operators monitor fully-automated processes on touch screens that provide information displays.

The success of this conversion was marked by the stable REAL/IX operating system and the object-oriented data system application software. These tools allow us to use object-oriented design philosophy to maximum benefit.

Previously, if we had a system outage with full demand on all five furnaces, we'd have to manually run mix to each of them for about one full shift to give the automated system time to catch up before we could go back to full mix control. With the new system, it takes the system only two hours to catch up after a full outage.

We evaluated writing proprietary software and testing it on a parallel computer system at one of our plants. We calculated it would cost $200,000 and take at least six months to develop and test the software.

We wanted faster turnaround, so we submitted the project for bids. Proposals ranged from $200,000 to $800,000. Most of them involved PCs running some sort of object-oriented display control system (SCADA) with programmable logic controllers (PLCs). The greatest problem with all those proposals was that it would require us to shut down the plant for several weeks to install the new system.

Then MODCOMP came up with a proposal to use a REAL/IX-based computer with an interface that would allow us to transfer to the new system for testing, and transfer back to the previous system if required. It took only two minutes to shut down one system and activate the other system.

Operations have been smooth since the day we brought the new system on-line in October 1996. We have to give credit to an exceptional design provided by AccessWare, our project integrator. With the application software running on the UNIX-based platform, we have positive command control over every element of the process. There's no guesswork involved.

Real-time control is especially important to us. When you're controlling a 30 MW furnace, any malfunction requires immediate action. We can't afford a system that takes time to determine a solution.

We need a system that acts on a priority interrupt immediately, and can support hundreds of interrupt items.

Further, real-time monitoring is important to control raw materials, and that includes the electricity that powers the furnaces. If we interact and control that efficiently, we save money. On the other hand, we cannot always predict with total accuracy the nature of our raw material stream. There's a lot of potential for variation, so the computer system needs to allow for that as well.

The biggest challenges we have in implementing any new process technology is that we don't have much time for off-line training because we have a continuous process. We needed an object-oriented design interface that was intuitive, so an operator who knows our process intimately could adapt this tool and make effective use of it with a minimum of training.

At this point, we know we have achieved a successful integration. If we didn't, we could not have set our recent production records.