As part of its continuous drive to reduce energy costs with the increasing price of electricity, Continental Tyre South Africa in Port Elizabeth has installed a new coal boiler.
The project was completed towards the end of last year at a cost of R65 million, and 9 megawatts of power per hour is being saved from the national grid.
Plant Engineering Manager, Andrew Singer says at this stage Continental are investigating going off the national grid altogether.
Singer explains how the boiler process works.
"We use steam in our curing process to volcanise our tyres. We need to generate the steam so we use boilers to do this, so the boilers are basically fed with coal which is a fire inside them. We use this to boil water which is supplied from the municipality, we then purify it. This process then generates steam for the factory."
Plant Manager, Wayne Brown, says winter electricity tariffs in Nelson Mandela Bay caused the company to become uncompetitive, hence the installation of the coal boiler as the most cost effective fuel source for the generation of steam." says Singer.
"The metro itself has two different rates, we have a summer rate and a winter rate. In winter the rates are 7 times more expensive than what they are during the summer months,and this increase in winter rate causes us to be very uncompetitive. The winter rates in Port Elizabeth are more expensive than any city in South Africa, even compared to around the world, we've done comparisons in America and Europe." says Brown.
From left: Dieter Horni (Manging Director), Andrew Singer (Plant Engineering Manger) and Wayne Brown (Plant Manager)
