Front cover story: SA’s first onshore helium and natural gas field
On May 4, 2016, The Linde Group; its African subsidiary, Afrox; and alternative energy company Renergen Limited – through its subsidiary TETRA 4 – signed an historic agreement for the commercialisation of the Free State Helium and Natural Gas field. African Fusion attends and talks to Nazmi Adams Afrox general manager of sales and marketing.
The full article SA's first onshore helium and natural gas field can be downloaded here.
The SAIW held its 2015/2016 AGM on May 20, 2016 and the opening African Fusion article for this month summarises the Institute’s successes during this period, as presented by its re-elected president, Morris Maroga.
The SAIW Member Profile comes from Transnet Engineering, which became the first EN 15085 CL 1-certified rail fabricator in Africa at the end of 2015. We visit the company’s Durban facility and talk to welding engineers, Rodwell Baloyi (IWE) and Dhurusha Govender, along with Collin Moopanar, the executive manager of R&D mechanical.
As usual, the published papers come from last year’s IIW International Conference in Helsinki. The first presents a development from voestAlpine, which has developed The alform welding system, a new approach to base material and welding consumable development that aims to optimise their combinations for fabrication. The second technical paper studies narrow gap gas metal arc welding (GMAW) of S890QL steel.
We talk to Renttech’s Johan Bester about self-shielded flux-cored wires, which, he believes, can be an ideal substitute for shielded metal arc/stick electrode welding for on-site construction projects.
Wiehan Zylstra, technical manager with the Welding Alloys South Africa, (WASA) then presents a case study on the use of Welding Alloys’ cobalt-based cladding material, STELLOY 6-G, which was welded out of position using Fronius’ TPS synergic pulsed-GMAW equipment.
We summarise a talk given at an SAIW evening meeting earlier this year by Jacques Cato, about welding fume, filtration technology and the solutions available from Donaldson Filtration Solutions in South Africa.
And we have an extended Welding and Cutting sect6ioin with articles from Air Products, Afrox, Fronius, Renttech Sandvik Welding and Actum, who has recently won the distribution rights for the orbital tube and pipe welding equipment range from Orbitalum.
Our Today’s technology article features Polysoude’s TIGer technology for cladding applications, a variation of hot wire TIG, which adds a second TIG arc to the give much better control of dilution levels and enhanced flexibility with respect to bead width.
Our next edition of African Fusion will be published in August, just in time for us the preview the welding stands at the Electra Mining show.
Until then.
Peter