Shougang Mining earnestly implements the deployment requirements of Shougang Group for its transformation and efficiency improvement. Based on the advancement of specific measures such as “combining inspection with operation”, Shougang Mining gives full play to the advantages of automation and informatization to fully realize the unattended operation of pump stations and make new breakthroughs in transformation and efficiency improvement.

Shougang Mining’s pump station system is responsible for the slurry transportation and production and the supply of production water during the production. Widely distributed and scattered, it can be found all over the Dashi River Iron Mine, the Water Plant Iron Mine and other factory areas,. Traditional production organization mostly relies on manual operation. It requires post operators to be stationed on site for a long time and operate field equipment according to production conditions. Before 2017, 102 on-duty personnel engaged in related positions. If the “unattended operation” is realized, it will greatly optimize the labor organization mode and effectively promote transformation, efficiency improvement, safety. Shougang Mining regards “manpower substituted by mechanization and reduced by automation” as an effective measure to reduce the number of on-site personnel and puts forward the concept of “enhancing the labor efficiency of pump stations and achieving unattended operation”. By using existing hardware resources, technical strength, and management experience, it replaces the manual operation with the automated system, and substitutes the information system for the manual inspection. At the beginning of 2017, it formulated the implementation guidance, and the relevant factories and mines made specific plans in conjunction with their actual conditions and advanced with all their efforts.

Shougang Mining’s remote monitoring project of the “unattended operation of pump stations” covers 28 pump stations, including the design of 20 sets of control software, the installation of 23 control cabinets, 31,000 meters of cable laying, and system commissioning. In its advancement various professional departments and relevant factories and mines actively cooperate and take many measures to achieve practical results. The Control and Test Center has developed a remote real-time monitoring and control system consisting of a field control system (PLC system), a smoke alarm system, a smart security alarm system, a central network system, and a client control system. The Dashi River Iron Mine and the Water Plant Iron Mine establish an efficient engineering research organization system to carefully study the functions and positioning of each pump station, and conduct system design on this basis.

The transformation of 28 pump stations is similar in structure, but due to their different locations and roles, the transformation can only be adapted to local conditions. During the transformation of Dajing Lift Pump Station, “if the circular orbit continuously disengages, an ‘artifact operation’ will occur, and if it is not discovered in time, it will cause a ‘well killing’ accident”. The Dashi River Iron Mine installs the self-made code wheel and the on-off switch at the center position of Dajing to automatically detect the speed of the car, which solves the problem that the “phantom operation” of the car cannot be discovered in time if left unattended, and enables the automatic monitoring of the running speed of the car. The Water Plant Iron Mine introduces wireless bridge communication technology to the drainage system of the stope, realizing wireless communication between pump stations; it develops and applies the automatic accumulation function of the submersible pump operation time to provide more accurate data support for periodical management of the pump; on the basis of the automatic control of the pump station, the water tanker is watered automatically to reduce the labor intensity of the driver. The two Qingshui pressure pump stations that the Mining Corporation is responsible for are directly related to the normal living water supply in the family area. In order to realize the quick alarm mode after unattended operation, the professionals repeatedly researched and demonstrated and finally determined the adoption of the alarm mode of GSM phone and SMS dual channel. The alarm host will collect information to the data terminal and use the phone and SMS to notify the relevant personnel at the first time, thus ensuring normal and stable water supply after unattended operation.

It is understood that since the unattended operation of pump stations officially started in Shougang Mining, 64 fixed-shift personnel have been canceled, and the design goals of the status monitoring and remote operation of each pump station and the automatic control of the constant water pressure have been achieved, which lay a solid technical foundation for Shougang Mining to achieve intrinsically safe production and optimize labor organization.