On October 10 at the Coca Cola Dome in Northriding, Gauteng; the D’Aria in Durbanville,Cape Town; and the Mount Edgecombe Country Club, KwaZulu-Natal, the Southern African Institute of Steel Construction (SAISC) showcased local steel construction and innovation at the SAISC 2019 Steel Awards.

In this opinion piece, Evert Janse van Vuuren of Omron Industrial Automation in Johannesburg, South Africa, a subsidiary of Omron Corporation, talks about ‘Factory Harmony’ a future trend involving humans and machines working in harmony in the factory of tomorrow.

With the aim of reducing plastic waste, sisters Kedibone and Kekeletso Tsiloane successfully prototyped the PlastiBrick; an innovation that uses recycled plastic to manufacture stock and maxi bricks, which are strong, durable, fire retardant and environmentally friendly.

Africa has embraced the innovation that drives WEG products and services, with customers seeing value in constant technological improvement. Siegfried Kreutzfeld, CEO of the South African based Zest WEG Group, explains that WEG is quick to introduce its new products into the African market, sometimes even before launching elsewhere in the world.

Petrochemical giant Sasol has recognised ACTOM Turbo Machines with one of its top 2019 awards for exceptional service in repair, refurbishment and ongoing maintenance.

The SABS, in conjunction with KSB Pumps and Valves, has tested a massive V16 diesel motor, which produces 1 350 kW of raw power, one of the most impressive pump sets to be assembled on South African soil in recent times.

Responsiveness to pit dewatering requirements sets Integrated Pump Rental apart from its competitors. The team is able to assess an application and provide a pit dewatering solution with the correctly sized pump.

AESSEAL®, the global specialist in the design and manufacture of mechanical seals, bearing protectors and seal auxiliary support systems, has introduced an innovative shorter API pump sealing solution for legacy pumps in the oil and gas industry that need to upgrade to dual seal technology. Shane Chester, AESSEAL’s MD in South Africa, explains.

SAIChE IChemE president David Lokhat summarises the new collaboration agreement between SAIChE and IChemE, which will link South African chemical engineers to the international chemical engineering community and provide access to the benefits associated with the larger global Institution.

MechChem Africa talks to JD Singleton, process director for Weir Minerals Africa, about the company’s five core Integrated Solutions offerings for: pit and underground mine dewatering; crushing and screening plants; mill circuits; mineral beneficiation plants; and tailings management.

It’s December again and time for another UN Climate Change Conference, COP 25 in Chile. This annual environmental ‘frenzy’ began in 1992 at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, when 178 member countries of The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) entered into a treaty to ‘stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system’.

The VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland has produced a discussion paper entitled: ‘The Carbon Reuse Economy: Transforming CO2 from a pollutant into a resource. MechChem Africa presents the introductory chapter.

The circular economy needs a commercially viable technology base capable of transforming and reprocessing waste into usable products and resources. Veolia Water Technologies’ Chris Braybrooke discusses the strategic importance of anaerobic digestion, a tried-and-tested technology family in the sewage and effluent treatment space.

Trailblazer Technologies’ John Bewsey is pioneering cost effective and potentially profitable ways of processing neutralised acid mine drainage (AMD) water, industrial wastewater and even underground ‘brakwater’. In this article, he describes his KNeW (Potassium Nitrate ex Waste) process, which relies on scalable ion exchange CSTR batteries with some value adding regeneration and post regeneration twists to transform dissolved contaminants into valuable fertilisers and industrial salts.

Global ventilation fans and systems manufacturer TLT-Turbo GmbH has launched a new range of mechanical vapour recompression fans with ceramic hybrid bearings to provide a long operational lifespan.

Another R100-million investment in the FLSmidth Supercenter in Delmas, Mpumalanga, has set the South African facility up as the Group’s global centre of excellence for the manufacture and supply of vibrating equipment including dewatering screens and associated wear components and spares. MechChem Africa visited the facility and talks to Warren Walker, the Supercenter’s operations manager and Stephan Kruger, director of manufacturing and warehousing.

In this month’s failure column, Tim J Carter talks about hydrogen and the importance of paying attention to the possible effects atomic hydrogen may have in embrittling steels and other materials, which can cause cracking and catastrophic failures of structures under stress. Carter is a Consulting Physical Metallurgist, previously in private practice and now with ImpLabs in Benoni.

Marthinusen & Coutts’s solution to an irregularity that occurred in the stator of a large 36 MW compressor motor deployed at Sasol’s Secunda plant, has yielded the best ever test results.

Following engagement with The Clean Energy Wire (CLEW) which, in cooperation with the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, recently hosted a research tour of the decarbonisation pathways being developed by Europe’s top-emitting industries, Louis Mielke introduces the Energy Transition Commission’s (ETC’s) ‘Mission Possible’ initiative and summarises one of the associated Mission Possible sectoral reports: Reaching net-zero carbon emissions from plastics.

thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions South Africa (tkIS SA) is once again celebrating one million Lost Time Injury (LTI)-free hours. Quality, health and safety manager for tkIS SA, Christo de Beer talks to MechChem Africa about Vision Zero, the underpinning initiative that enables the company to repeatedly achieve critical safety milestones.