South Africa experienced a severe shortfall in electricity supply during 2008.
Eskom, the national electricity supplier, implemented several strategies to alleviate
the situation. The Power Conservation Programme set the mining sector a
mandatory target to reduce its annual power consumption by 10%. The quickest
way to achieve these savings is by optimising the largest power consumers on the
mines. Compressed air is one of these, constituting approximately 40% of total
electricity consumption on platinum mines.
Several methods to reduce power consumption on compressed air systems were
investigated. The investigation revealed that centrifugal air compressors on the
mines are typically manually operated at a fixed delivery output. Attempts to
reduce electricity consumption by reducing air demand will therefore not
necessarily lead to savings. A control system that will enable the compressor to
automatically match the supply with system demand is required. An optimised
control strategy was then developed and implemented on three compressed air
systems. Measurements demonstrated savings between 13% and 49%. With the Eskom
tariffs proposed for 2010, this implies a total saving of R 46 million per year for
these three case studies. This will achieve, and may even exceed, the mandatory
reduction in electricity consumption of the mines. These results demonstrate that
one of the quickest ways to reduce energy consumption on South African mines is
by implementing optimised compressor controls. / Thesis (M.Ing. (Electrical Engineering))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2010
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NWUBOLOKA1/oai:dspace.nwu.ac.za:10394/4094 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Booysen, Walter |
| Publisher | North-West University |
| Source Sets | North-West University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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