AMC Magnesium Plant (Australia)

Australian Magnesium Corporation (AMC) is determining the viability of a commercial magnesium plant using its proprietary technology. To assist in establishing both the design and capacity of the plant, a model of the plant was developed using detailed process flow diagrams, mass flows, reliability information from literature and maintenance experience, and operation and start-up experience from AMC’s pilot plant. In particular, the model was used to evaluate the:

  • surge capacity required between sections of the plant
  • critical equipment requiring standby capacity
  • number of parallel streams required for sections of the plant
  • potential capital cost reduction options.

 

The model was run with different scenarios to assist AMC in determining the most effective plant configuration that would produce the required capacity at the lowest cost.

East Coast Main Line Upgrade Programme (UK)

The objective of the East Coast Mainline Upgrade Programme was to double the capacity of one of the UK’s busiest passenger and freight rail routes over an eight year period. A consortium of three companies (Railtrack, Fluor and Mott MacDonald) was assembled in York, UK, to carry out the Programme development. One of the groups in the Programme was the Capacity Modelling Team, whose task was to confirm the validity of the infrastructure requirements for the proposed service level increases of the four-phased upgrade.

 

As the infrastructure schemes changed frequently, a method to quickly test the service level on the infrastructure was required. In the past, a timetable was constructed to test the combination. However, each timetable required months of development due to the complexities of integrating the timetable with five other Railtrack zones. Thus, a more automated method was required. This was achieved by creating an automatic timetable generation integer programming model in Excel using the XPRESS solver.

HSL Zuid (Holland)

The Holland HSL–Zuid Project was a proposed 300 km/h high speed rail link between Amsterdam airport and the Belgium border, and was part of the evolving European high speed train network. A consortium of three companies, known as Infraspeed, bid for the right to design, build, operate and maintain the line.

 

The focus of this project was to establish the level of availability and ultimately the total train delay minutes for each of the proposed timetables. This information was then used in the Dutch Government’s penalty cost mechanism.