Driven by the “double carbon” target and digital transformation,
the copper smelting industry is experiencing a profound change
from “experience copper refining” to “digital copper refining”.
5G technology and industrial Internet are deeply integrated,
providing low-latency control, massive connectivity, and data
integration for copper smelting. The deep integration of 5G
technology and industrial Internet provides copper smelting
with a new infrastructure of low-latency control, massive
connectivity and data integration, and promotes the intelligent
migration of the whole chain of production, operation and
maintenance, and logistics. This paper analyzes the benchmark
cases to decode how 5G+Industrial Internet reconstructs the
core competitiveness of copper smelting.
First, the way to break the game: 5G +
Industrial Internet to crack the four
stubborn problems of copper smelting
Traditional copper smelting faces multiple bottlenecks:
Serious data silos: melting, electrolysis, acid production and
other process data are fragmented, making global
optimization difficult;
Sloppy equipment management: key unit failure warning lags
behind, unplanned downtime losses are huge;
High pressure on safety and environmental protection: many
blind zones of manual inspection, insufficient precision
of flue gas emission control;
Lack of flexible production: sluggish process adjustment
under raw material fluctuation, difficult to adapt to market changes.
Advantages of 5G+Industrial Internet's downgrade strike:
Ultra-low latency: end-to-end latency <20ms, meeting the
demand for real-time regulation and control of smelting furnace;
Millions of connections: single plant access to 100,000+ sensors,
realizing the digitization of all elements;
Edge Intelligence: MEC (Multi-access Edge Computing) in situ
processing of data, response speed increased by 50 times.
Scenario revolution: four major landing
applications of 5G+Industrial Internet
1. Production control: from “fuzzy experience” to
“millimeter-level regulation and control”.
Smelting furnace digital twin:
5G network real-time transmission of furnace temperature,
pressure, gas composition and other 800+ parameters,
to build a 1:1 virtual furnace, AI every 5 seconds to
optimize the oxygen material ratio, so that the fluctuation
of crude copper grade from ± 1.5% to ± 0.3%.
Intelligent joint control of electrolyzer:
Connecting 2,000 electrolyzer voltage sensors through 5G
module, dynamically adjusting pole pitch and current density,
reducing DC power consumption by 8% and copper content
of anode mud by 12%.
Case: After deploying 5G+digital twin system in a copper
plant in Yunnan, the comprehensive energy consumption
of tons of copper decreased by 15%, and the annual
efficiency increased by more than 120 million yuan.
2. Equipment Operation and Maintenance: Predictive
Maintenance's “Zero Downtime” Revolution
Key unit health imaging:
5G+vibration sensor collects data of converter tilting gearbox
at 50kHz frequency, combining with LSTM algorithm to
predict failures 14 days in advance, reducing maintenance
cost by 40%.
AR Remote Collaboration:
Experts guided on-site maintenance through 5G+AR glasses,
and equipment restart time was compressed from 72 hours to 8 hours.
Data validation: After Jiangxi Copper applied 5G predictive
maintenance, the overall equipment efficiency (OEE) increased
to 92% and unplanned downtime was reduced by 70%.
3. Environmental protection and safety: a “smart line of defense”
for round-the-clock monitoring.
Precise control of flue gas emissions:
5G transmits data such as pH value and slurry density of the
desulfurization tower, and the PID controller dynamically
adjusts the limestone dosage, so that the SO₂ emission
concentration is stably lower than 35mg/m³.
Personnel safety monitoring:
5G+UWB positioning system tracks the location of personnel
in high-risk areas in real time, and the electronic fence
triggers an alarm in <0.1 second.
Effectiveness: A smelter's environmental protection data
exceeding the standard events dropped by 95%, and the
safety accident rate went to zero.
4. Logistics scheduling: the “intelligent brain” of AGV clusters.
5G intelligent scheduling system:
40 AGVs share location and load information in
real time through 5G private network, dynamic
path planning makes the idling rate <5%, and the
efficiency of copper concentrate transshipment
is improved by 60%.
Unmanned weighing and checking catty:
5G+machine vision automatically identifies the
license plate of trucks and goods, shortens the
weighing process from 30 minutes to 3 minutes,
and eliminates human fraud.
Third, the implementation path: copper
enterprises landing 5G + industrial
Internet three-step strategy
Foundation building: 5G private network coverage of the entire region
Deploying 3.5GHz band base stations on demand, dividing
UPF (user plane function) to realize local offloading of data,
and controlling the delay within 15ms.
Connecting things: Industrial Internet platform construction
Integrate MES, SCADA, ERP systems, and build 20+ industrial
APPs such as melting optimization and equipment health
management.
Creative Intelligence: Continuous evolution of AI model
Training process optimization model based on production
data, iteration cycle shortened from 3 months to 7 days.
Fourth, future outlook: the deep integration
of 5G-A and industrial meta-universe
Pass-Through Sensory Integration:
5G-Advanced (5G-A) network fusion radar sensing capability,
real-time monitoring of copper liquid flow rate and flow rate
with millimeter-level accuracy.
Digital Employee:
AI virtual engineers in the industrial meta-universe
diagnose equipment status in real time and guide
physical world operations.
Zero-carbon factory:
5G+ energy router intelligently schedules photovoltaic
and energy storage systems to realize 100% green
power supply in the smelting plant.
Conclusion
5G+Industrial Internet is bringing the copper smelting
industry into a new era of “all-connected, all-intelligent
and all-green”. Through the reconstruction of production
process and the release of data value, enterprises not
only realize the leap in efficiency and quality, but also seize
the first opportunity in the “double carbon” strategy. In the
future, with the popularization of new technologies such as
RedCap and passive Internet of Things, copper smelting will
continue to break through the depth of intelligence, opening
up a golden era of global competitiveness reshaping.