Usiminas Boilers

Boiler Control System

Altus provided the technology for developing the new Boiler Control System at one of Usiminas' manufacturing plants, delivering significant cost savings and boosting productivity for the company.

Usiminas Boiler Control System

The Boiler Control System, designed with Altus’s programmable controller technology, manages load balancing, protection, and load shedding for Usiminas' 45 and 130 t/hour boilers. These systems control the supply of high-pressure, high-temperature steam to turbo blowers, thermoelectric generators, and process areas like the Plate-Mill shipping yard.

They also support the automatic deceleration of the hot strip mill unwinders and the discharge system of batteries 1 and 2 at Coking Plant 1. The project included area instrumentation, where Motorola radios were used to link measurement points to the InduSoft Web Studio supervisory system via Ethernet.
Economia

Energy Efficiency

The energy generation optimization achieved through this project saves Usiminas approximately US$ 450,000 per month

Dados Precisos

Accurate Data

The embedded technology in this solution delivers highly accurate data throughout the process

Informações Centralizadas

Centralized Information

The system also enhances the centralization of all data related to resource use

Controle Online

Real-Time Control

With a range of online diagnostics and alarms, the system enables remote monitoring, ensuring continuous oversight

Principais benefícios do novo sistema

Key benefits of the new system

The system is controlled by four Altus programmable controllers, connected via an Ethernet network with CPU and I/O module redundancy.

Supervision is carried out from a dedicated Supervisory Station, with all PLCs linked to it through Altus AL-3405 communication modules over Ethernet/TCP-IP (IEEE-802.3), as well as the optical transceivers and repeaters used in the project.

The system also features a real-time multitasking processing module, which handles communication with two single-loop controllers for precise boiler temperature control.

Características Específicas da Aplicação

Application-specific features

The system includes 784 digital and analog input/output points, all operating in redundancy mode, along with the process control CPUs. These operate within an Ethernet TCP/IP network using fiber optics.

Additionally, the system features remote supervision capabilities for enhanced monitoring and control.