The Alouette Aluminum smelter was expanded from 245 000 tonnes per annum to 555 000 tonnes per annum. The brownfield project included a new AP30 potline of 312 pots, additional 18 pots to the existing potline, two new gas treatment centres, a new casting area, a new anode baking furnace and extensive modifications and expansions to the carbon plant, raw material handling, electrical distribution, and automation systems.
Hatch and its joint venture partner provided complete EPCM services as well as commissioning services, startup and operations assistance.

The Hatch Systems & Process Control team was tasked with providing efficient, integrated and scalable information and control systems.

The result was:

• Standardization of information and control systems based on fewer and latest technologies
  
• Simplified and automated information flow from the plant floor to the boardroom
  
• Improved productivity by increasing the plant capacity by over 125% with less than 64% additional staff
  
• Increased environmental emission awareness by increasing the information availability

Scope of Services
The systems and process control budget was 55 000 hours which included:

• Project management, integrated systems and automation conceptual to detailed design, procurement of all control hardware and software, all software programming, simulation and acceptance tests, implementation on site as well as startup and ramp-up assistance
• Migration of all Phase I obsolete information and control technologies on a live operating system, databases and infrastructure including:
  
  • Siemens S5 to PCS7
    
  • DEC RDB to Oracle
    
  • DEC-Vax to Intel/Windows
    
• Implementation of a complete fibre-optic network for both plant and business networks including new Layer 3 switching equipment
• Implementation and programming of a fully integrated plant control system on Siemens PCS7 DCS system
• Implementation, configuration and programming of the plant’s manufacturing execution system, based on OSIsoft PI, Oracle and Uniface
  • Pot operation and management system integrated to Alpsys system
  • Live access to metal batch and lab reports from casthouse operation control room

Project Highlights

• Record safety performance for a large project in Québec, delivered three months ahead of schedule and below budget
  
• The early commissioning allowed additional production of 55 000 tonnes of quality metal as a result of the efficient ramp up. A large component of the success was attributed to the efficient work done by the Systems & Process control team
  
• Plant nameplate exceeded four months after the end of startup
  
• Brownfield implementation with no loss of production. Over 100 online system implementations done throughout the project including more than 30 000 I/O’s added to the existing 22 000, making it the world largest PCS7 implementation at the time
  
• Identical level 1 and 2 operator interface resulting in:
  
  • A plant-wide common control platform and view of the process
    
  • Eight redundant OS servers supplying 59 clients throughout the plant for increased availability
    
  • Reduced programming, maintenance and training
    
• EPCM S&PC approach allowing recovery and protection of Alouette specific I.P. developed over the years
  
• Methodologies standardized plant-wide and reliable systems fully operational before startup allowing Alouette to perform a very efficient startup and continue its optimization effort and improve its process efficiency post startup
  
• System integration success linked to:
  
  • Open relationship between Alouette project and operation team
    
  • Minimized number of parties involved
    
  • Rigorous methodology, management methods and implementation strategy

Awards

• Awarded the Grand Prix 2006 for construction projects by the Québec Council of Consulting Engineers
  
• Awarded the Mercuriade 2005 Award for Best Project in Québec