Every Friday, SAfm’s radio anchor Sakina Kamwendo speaks to Martin Creamer, publishing editor of Engineering News & Mining Weekly. Reported here is this Friday’s At the Coalface transcript:
Kamwendo: New Proudly South African technology that uses 70% less electricity has entered the key commercial phase.
Creamer: This was given quite a lot of recognition at the recent modernisation showcase of the Minerals Council South Africa and a lot of researchers. They want South Africa to modernise mining and this was held up as a local, Proudly South African development. It is called SmeltDirect.
It was developed by African Rainbow Minerals and it has reached a commercialised stage, so it can actually be retrofitted to existing smelters. We know that a lot of these smelters have had to stop, because of the price of electricity. We also know that Eskom is negotiating lower prices with them, but if they can cut the use of electricity by 70%, that will be incredibly positive. Also, SmeltDirect also comes with a lot of other benefits.
It comes with the ability to use renewable energy, which means this will be cleaner and greener and it comes with a lot of efficiency. People are saying, let's modernise while we keep these smelters going on and we have got this technology that is available now. It is at commercial level. Let's use it. Some of the companies are a little bit reluctant to invest at this stage, but hopefully there will be some sort of incentive for them to do so.
