NEW ANODE RODDING SHOP SOLUTIONS

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NEW ANODE RODDING SHOP SOLUTIONS

1970, Eastalco, State of Maryland, USA: ECL commissioned his first complete anode rodding shop, from loading/unloading station to casting station. 40 years later, ECL has gained an extensive know-how and unrivalled experience with more than 40 smelters equipped with ECL machines across 6 continents. Able to offer from single machines to turnkey rodding shops for all types of anode (2, 3, 4 or 6 tubs) including engineering of the building (Alba Line 5 – 2003, Jonquière – 2009, Balco – 2010) and construction of the building (Emal Phase 1, 2010); ECL has designed and set up more than 280 machines, constituting the largest worldwide installed base in the primary aluminium industry. Rodding shop design through flow management Needless to say that the anode rodding shop is a complex system playing a major role

in the smelter efficiency and productivity. Its performance can dramatically influence reduction line operation but also the lifetime of Anode Baking Furnaces flue walls. The reduction line must be constantly supplied with new anodes whereas spent anodes are taken out of the pots. Hence the rodding shop has some absolute imperatives: quality, productivity and reliability. It’s why ECL attaches considerable importance to the first phase of the rodding shop: DESIGN. As a start, ECL always considers first the smelter’s targets in terms of production quality and productivity. This includes identifying solutions to reduce operating cost and increase capacity. The type and quantity of stations needed is only a part of the equation. To help it in this task, ECL employs a highly specialized software (Witness®) commonly used in the automotive industry to organize and simulate the anode

flow, taking into account the cycle times, reliability and availability rates of machines, anode buffer sizes between machines, conveyors speed and machines locations. Various solutions are simulated to determine the best set of machines and rodding shop organization. This allows ECL to guarantee an efficient solution with given production performance for single machines or complete shops. To ensure the optimum productivity of the shop, a global flow, production and maintenance management system can also be put in place. To this end ECL provides a level 2 solution giving access to a large amount of information regarding each station and the whole rodding shop operation. The centralized computer receives from each station several information such as Input, Output, Alarms status, fault status and operator’s shifts changes. The computer

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