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Heating, cooling, ventilation and air conditioning
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28
Mechanical Technology — August 2013
J
ohnson controls goes back to
1885, when Warren Johnson, a
high school teacher in Wiscon-
sin, USA, invented the world’s
first bimetallic thermostat for controlling
room temperature of central heating
systems. “Johnson was an inventor. In
1904 he made a steam car that was
used to deliver the mail, a vehicle that is
still featured on stamps,” says Cameron.
Off the back of the emerging automo-
tive industry at the time, Johnson went
on to build a component manufacturing
business. “Johnson Controls was listed
in 1934 and, despite several minor
name changes, has remained, more or
less, the same kind of company to this
day,” he adds.
In South Africa, Johnson controls is
split into two: an automotive industries
division that manufactures car seats
and body trim – for the likes of Volkswa-
gen in Uitenhage, and Mercedes Benz
in Port Elizabeth, amongst others – and
a building division, that specialises in
chillers, heating and air-conditioning
systems, building management and
Impala Platinum’s 17 Shaft has the largest cooling compressor in the southern hemisphere, a York
YD chiller that supplies 14,5 MW of cooling off a single chiller.
York YD chillers
achieve the high reliability
and duty required in the mining
environment, without the high costs as-
sociated with turnkey designs.
Modern chillers and the
efficiency/reliability balance
national in 2005, a leading brand of
chillers and air conditioning. “York has a
similarly long history. The company be-
gan 1886, chilling water for industrial
purposes. Today, 125 years later, York
holds an 85% market share in South
African mine cooling applications,
chilling water for underground mine
ventilation. We work very closely with
Bluhm Burton Engineering, for example,
and for its systems at Impala Platinum’s
17 Shaft, we recently installed the larg-
est cooling compressor in the southern
hemisphere, a York YD chiller that sup-
plies 14,5 MW of cooling off a single
chiller, and there will eventually be four
of these,” he relates.
Describing mine ventilation systems,
Cameron says that they require big
motors and compressors. “The chill-
ers create cold water, which is stored
in concrete dams. The water is then
sprayed into the incoming air for ventila-
tion, cooling it down before being col-
lected and recycled back to the chiller.
The ventilation system chiller has to
run 24/7 to keep the underground rock
surfaces cool enough for mining.”
York chillers for the mines are
regarded as HVAC ‘workhorses’ that
have been tried and tested. “We have
supplied chillers for 13 Impala plants,
so it made sense to standardise on
York for the new 17 Shaft and into the
future,” says Cameron, quoting Andre
Pieters, refrigeration engineer at Impala
Platinum.
“The success of York chillers is built
on the use of standard HVAC-grade
solutions with industrial grade controls.
This enables the high reliability and duty
required in the mining environment,
without the high costs associated with
Globally, Johnson Controls is a diversified company that
serves the building and automotive industries through three
business units: Building Efficiency, Automotive Experience
and Power Solutions.
MechTech
talks to Neil Cameron, GM
of Johnson Controls Building Efficiency Africa, the company’s
local presence in the building efficiency and HVAC fields.
access controllers; fire safety systems;
monitoring or backup power generators
and UPSs, and even automatic sprinkler
systems.
“Our business is all about buildings,”
Cameron explains. “Globally, we have
over 110 factories around the world
that manufacture components, controls
and products for all kinds of modern
buildings. In South Africa we sell, in-
stall and service air conditioning units
and chillers; air handling units; heat-
ing and cooling controls; heat pumps
and all of the apparatus around heat
pump systems. We also develop and
install security, access control, CCTV
and fire protection systems. We have
85 service vehicles for our own instal-
lation and service crews and a host of
contractors all over South Africa and
Africa,” he relates. “We also offer a full
facility management service, where we
take responsibility for all of a building’s
services: the lighting; heating; air con-
ditioning; water and total facilities, for
example,” he says.
Johnson Controls bought York inter-
