IMP has delivered a number of large, automated port facilities for major companies around the world. This presentation gives a brief overview of a selection of these labs. Go to www.impautomation.com to see our other projects and products.

1. A selection of
Automated Port Laboratories
completed by

2. Rio Tinto - Cape Lambert

3. Largest robotic iron ore port laboratory in the world
4 robots operating on two 20m tracks
Automated sample dividing, rapid drying, natural or dry
lump sieving, dry fines sieving, moisture determination,
splitting, archiving, weighing, sample preparation,
automated XRF and four point TGA analysis
The entire process from the sample stations to final analysis
is fully automated

4. FMG – Port Laboratory 2

5. 2 robot cells in a figure 8 layout – 1 for each sample station
Redundancy is assured by this configuration
Samples automatically taken during ship loading are
transported to the laboratory by conveyor or IMP’s monorail
sample transport system
Each cell carries out particle size and moisture content
analysis. An aliquot from each sub lot is dried, crushed, and
pulverised for analysis

6. Kumba Resources
Saldanha (South Africa)

7. Worlds first sampling and robotic facility to straddle the ship
loading conveyors
2 robotic cells and each serves a single sample station but
the novel design allows samples to be passed from one cell to
the other as required
The system splits the samples in order to build composites for
each sub lot
Crushing, milling, splitting, sizing, TGA and XRF analysis using
fused beads is all fully automated

8. Roy Hill – Port Laboratory

9. 1 Large robotic arm on a linear track
Up to four 500kg composite samples can be accumulated for
distribution to the client or additional testing
The laboratory has been designed such that a mirror of the
facility can be produced in the future lining up the two
facilities together via the rotating magazine
All analytical and process data is stored and managed by the
IMP ControlTrack LIMS

10. FMG – Port Laboratory 1

11. This robotic laboratory automatically receives up to 36kg
representative samples taken during ship loading
Composite samples of up to 500kg can be produced as part
of the process
Results obtained from the laboratory are used to certify the
cargo

12. BHP – Nelson Point

13. IMP provided 2 fully automated robotic sample weighing
systems and 2 fully automated fusion systems
These systems were specifically designed to ensure the
Nelson Point system has no single point of failure
This laboratory will never be in the situation where analytical
samples cannot be prepared for analysis

14. Go to
www.impautomation.com
For more information