Automation of the Proserpine mill feeding station

摘要

The feeding station is the area of plant where full cane wagons are unloaded and empty wagons are assembled, in preparation for distribution to harvesters. It can be a high risk area of the plant, particularly if manual uncoupling of cane wagons is required prior to the wagon unloading process. This paper presents an overview of a project to automate the mill feeding station at Proserpine sugar mill. The project aimed to reduce risk while improving operational and maintenance aspects. The project included development of novel methods and items of plant necessary to facilitate the improvements in a compressed timeframe within budgetary and physical constraints. The team working on the improvement developed nine proposals for the feeding station. These proposals were then assessed for each risk element in the process to define the most effective option to adopt. The risk elements included the total operational process from when the wagons were indexed through the feeding station for emptying, to the cane wagon handling process in the field. Time constraints, physical assets and budget constraints dictated that this project could not resemble other solutions within the sugar industry. Several novel items of plant were required to be developed and integrated into the feeding station equipment, to address the constraints imposed on the project. The project comprised the full spectrum of activities from surveying and upgrading the cane rail network, modifying the rolling stock and redesigning the feeding station to upgrade from a manual uncoupling and recoupling operation, to a full automatic uncoupling and recoupling operation. On completion of the upgrade and following two seasons of operations, Proserpine Mill has realised a safe work environment where people are no longer exposed to high risk in this section of the plant. The implementation of novel equipment and a team of 10 experienced, dedicated specialists, facilitated the project to be completed on-time and within budget.