MOSCOW, November 9. /TASS/. Specialists of the Kola Mining and Metallurgical Company (a part of Nornickel) have finalized another stage of modernizing the automatic control system at the enrichment plant in Zapolyarnyi, the Murmansk region, the company's press service said on Thursday.
"The specialists have completed a complex of measures to organize a sub-system for management of technology equipment at the third stage of flotation, as well as a sub-system to process the plant's general signals," the press service said in a statement.
Modernization of the plant's control system is organized in a few stages. In 2016, the company improved equipment at the pulp-pumping station. "Now it is the time to improve control of the grinding system, and the final stage would be to integrate local control systems into one common information system of the enrichment factory," the press service said.
The company had to update the equipment, since some spare parts for the existing equipment are not manufactured any longer. "This adds to the risk of emergency situations, which may even result in stopping work of the enrichment plant," the press service said. "The modernization will exclude those risks and will offer flexible approaches to changing the technology processes' algorithms."
The Kola Mining and Metallurgical Company is a leading production complex in the Murmansk region as a major producer of non-ferrous metals, including strategic metals. The company is the world's biggest nickel refining enterprise and Russia's only producer of electrolytic cobalt of highest grades. The products are supplied both to domestic and international markets.