They say necessity is the mother of invention. And it is the need for a reliable electricity supply that drove Anglo American Platinum to develop South Africa’s thermal harvesting plant which generates 4.3 MW from waste heat.
After noticing that Eskom was dillydallying to conclude its megaprojects and was not instilling confidence amongst mining investors about power supply certainty, Anglo American decided to take a proverbial bull by the horns to develop a plant to generate electricity to meet its own demand. Then, it engaged the services of Eternity Power.
Eternity Power director, Jacque Malan, says the power plant takes waste heat from the smelter and, through a process of heat exchange and evaporation, drives a turbine.
Malan explains that the power plant takes waste heat from the smelter and, through a process of heat exchange and evaporation, drives a turbine. The turbine is directly connected to a generator that produces electricity. The motive fluid is a closed loop system.
The power plant obtains its heat for generation from Amplats’ platinum smelting process. According to Malan this is 10% to 20% cheaper than Eskom’s current effective tariff.
On full completion, the project cost R150m which was funded by Investec. Under the critical infrastructure programme (CIP) the Department of Trade and Industry (dti) provided a R30m grant.
To, initially, to observers this project might have seemed grandiose, but without substance. But now any doubts have been put to rest.
