ANOTHER BEE MILESTONE
Under the current black economic empowerment (BEE) legislation, The Preferential Procurement Element (Code 500), as set out in the Code of Good Practice, measures the extent to which South African companies buy goods and services from suppliers with strong BEE procurement recognition levels. This requires that companies that wish to be BEE compliant spend 70% of their procurement with other BEE compliant organisations. Even for smaller enterprises, the Qualifying Small Enterprises (QSE) scorecard requires a 50% spend. As preferential procurement is worth 20 points on the BEE scorecard, Air Products South Africa is pleased that it has achieved Level 4 BEE compliance after an audit conducted in November 2009.
Air Products South Africa has shown its commitment to the objectives of BEE by gaining a rating of 70.02% for the year 2009/2010. This makes Air Products a Value-Adding Enterprise, which means that companies procuring from Air Products South Africa qualify for a 25% enhancement. This adds to the 100% already achieved which means 125% of the BEE procurement parameter normally attributed to Level 2 contributors to BEE.
As a good corporate citizen, the company fully embraced the spirit of BEE, which has been demonstrated by year-on-year improvements it has made in the BEE codes of good practice. In 2008, the company moved its BEE rating from 61.06% to 66.47%, this also being achieved on the back of improvements in the majority of the codes of good practice. At Air Products South Africa, we have made a concerted effort over a number of years to embrace the principles of BEE. For this reason, we are particularly proud of our Level 4 achievement.
Air Products South Africa has identified education as a particular area of focus and believes that the future prosperity of the country will be to a large extent dependent on how well the country educates its citizens. Although it is essential to observe the laws of the land, Air Products South Africas commitment to BEE goes beyond mere compliance. We believe that our future depends on our ability to harness the talent and energy of our entire nations people. Therefore, amongst others, we will continue our focus on education, both internally and externally, supporting projects to provide opportunities to disadvantaged communities and individuals.
We are cognisant of the fact that this high level of accomplishment is not something that will allow us to rest on our laurels, and we constantly plan and strategise to take these standards to new heights.
Published on February 2, 2010 in Company News, Spotlight |
The New Cold Box – The History So Far
Air Products Newcastle plant recently underwent a multi-million refurbishment and expansion project. The need for this arose because of additional oxygen requirements from the ArcelorMittal steel plant.
The Air Products Newcastle plant has been providing a continuous supply of oxygen to the ArcelorMittal steel plant for the past 40 years, through three existing air separation units (ASUs) commissioned in the 70s. These ASUs produce, oxygen, nitrogen and argon gases. The steel-makers requirement was for a substantially increased oxygen supply to its No 5 blast furnace.
Oxygen is used extensively in the steel making process because of its ability to produce high combustion temperatures, and for the removal of impurities such as carbon and sulphur. Nitrogen and argon are also used in the steelmaking process for inert blanketing and stirring of hot molten metals.
A key component in the upgrade of the Newcastle facility is a 54.7 metre cold box or distillation column. This new piece of equipment primarily produces oxygen and nitrogen with argon as a secondary product. The cold box is essentially a very large structural steel box containing fractional distillation columns and heat exchangers.
The three existing ASUs have been refurbished for continued operation. The installation of the new cold box is part of a contractual agreement between ArcelorMittal and Air Products, to increase the steel production, as a result of the reline of blast furnace N5 and the upgrade of the sinter plant.
The older ASUs produced oxygen at low pressures. This gas then still had to undergo further compression to make it suitable for the steel-making process. This was an extremely costly process, not just in terms of energy, but also in its use of consumables and ancillary equipment.
The new cold box has the very latest in technology, Air Products has upgraded the entire control system, and has standardised on the Siemens/Moore digital control system at all of its plants. This is in an effort to simplify training and to ensure that Air Products technicians are able to maintain the companys plant wherever these might be.
The Earths atmosphere is almost completely comprised of 12 gases. The three major ones are nitrogen, (78%), oxygen (21%) and argon (nearly 1%). An air separation unit separates air into its three main gases by fractional distillation of liquefied air. This is possible because of the different boiling points of the oxygen, nitrogen and argon. The technology is similar to the process in which crude oil is separated into petrol, diesel, and waxes, except that air separation happens at very low temperatures.
The air is subjected to five main processes namely filtration, compression, purification, cooling and distillation. The cooling is achieved by expanding a portion of the air from a high pressure to a low pressure in a turbo-expander. The pressure-drop causes the gas to release energy, so it cools down. A similar thing happens when gas is released from an aerosol can; the gas cools rapidly as it expands.
In the new cold box, the main air compressor is a three-stage turbo compressor driven by an 11kV induction motor. The heat exchangers are intercoolers, which remove the heat of compression from the air between the three stages. A portion of the air is compressed to a higher pressure in a separate booster air compressor. The compression plant requires a significant amount of process cooling water, which is generated in a cooling tower alongside the unit.
After compression, the air is scrubbed and cooled by direct contact with chilled water in a tall, vertical contacting column. The water is chilled by evaporative cooling using waste nitrogen gas from the distillation system. The absolute dryness of the nitrogen gives it huge evaporative potential, and therefore the ability to cool the water to as low as four degrees.
The scrubbed and cooled air is then further purified by passing it through a molecular sieve adsorption system especially formulated to absorb moisture, CO2 and other contaminants from the feed air. The granules act like a sponge and remove contaminants, which would solidify and block the plant at cryogenic temperatures.
Another function of the purification stage is the removal of airborne hydrocarbons, which would create an explosion hazard if allowed to enter the distillation section of the plant. The adsorption granules are continually regenerated and are reusable – air being purified in one vessel while the other is undergoing regeneration. The vessels are periodically switched from service to regeneration mode. Therefore as one vessel becomes contaminated, it is swapped with the other vessel, which has been regenerated. Regeneration is done by passing a stream of heated waste nitrogen through the granules.
After purification the air enters the cold box where it is cooled down to approximately minus 180°C which is its liquefaction temperature. The air is introduced into the first of several distillation columns. A distillation column basically consists of a tall vertical vessel filled with sieve trays or structured packing. The packing has the function of bringing the liquid and vapour fractions into direct contact with each other, so that heat can be exchanged between the liquid and vapour fractions.
Typically the rising vapours heat up falling droplets of liquid air.
Nitrogen, having the lowest boiling point of the three gases, evaporates fairly readily is withdrawn at the top of the column. Oxygen is less volatile and tends to be condensed into the liquid phase by the falling liquid
stream. It is therefore withdrawn from the bottom of the distillation column. Several stages of distillation are required to reach the required purity and a modern air separation plant will typically have three or more distillation columns. Argon has a boiling point between that of nitrogen and oxygen and is withdrawn as a side-stream, part way up one of the distillation columns.
The whole process requires ultra-low temperatures; so another key feature of cryogenic distillation is the need to have good insulation. Expanded perlite a mineral substance that expands when exposed to heat is used. The entire cold box is filled with very fine granules of perlite to insulate the process vessels and piping from ambient heat.
The cold box was finally lifted into place on Sunday September 14 by two Target cranes. A 750-ton lattice boom crane with a 28-metre radius was erected to lift the top of the cold box by 58 metres. A 440-ton extended-boom, tail-end crane was used to hold the base off the ground while it was slid across and rotated into place on the pre-prepared concrete base.
Newcastle Goes Online
With the cold box erect, the ancillary equipment, such as the pump box, the turbo expander box, the associated feed piping, platforms and ladders had to be installed. Finally, the electrical and all the instrument cable connections needed to be connected.
The new plant had its origins from various parts of the globe. The core cryogenic components were designed in the UK, while the warm end components were designed in Shanghai, by Air Products Chinese office. The utilities and the civil engineering were done locally. Rob Richardson, who led the project team, had the unenviable task of marrying the efforts of the three geographically-remote teams.
When the time came to switch the new plant on, there were a few hiccups during commissioning. With high pressures, and high-speed rotating machinery, the teething troubles were fairly typical of this type of project. However, these were completely sorted out in the first three weeks.
Air Products was very pleased with the support that it got from its partner OEMS and, indeed, our overseas parent company.
To ensure the new plant delivered on its design promises, the commissioning of the plant included performance testing. Here, the plant successfully passed its design performance tests in fact, slightly exceeding its nameplate capacity.
However, with the new plant, its energy efficiency is where it scores over other earlier air separation units (ASUs).
The efficiency of ASUs has continually improved over the years, this plant being comparable or better than anything else in the country at the moment. It is only one of two plants in the country that produces high-purity argon directly by cryogenic distillation, a process that doesn’t require hydrogen as a feedstock.
The other major advantage of this plant is the quality of its products.
The new column is very much at the high end in terms of air-separation plants. It produces high purity oxygen and ultra-high purity grade nitrogen and argon. The key to its quality output is the very sophisticated analytical equipment necessary to carry out the quality assurance needed. To measure both in-process quality and final product quality, this plant has 10 to 12 on-line analysers verifying product quality parameters at any given time. It is also equipped with advanced distributed control systems to give the necessary sophistication of control to achieve these quality standards.
Consistency is a feature of the highly automated plant. In a steady state operation, it runs itself under computer control. Operator intervention is generally needed only for start up and shut down.
The new ASU is the fourth at Newcastle. The three existing ASUs, which are still in good working order, date back over a period of 38 years.
The new plant is only part of the recent history of the Newcastle site. The new plant was vconstructed as part of a roll-over and an expansion of Air Products existing contract with Arcelor Mittal. Part of that contract involved a refurbishment of the three existing ASUs. These were extensively refurbished in an R40-million project. Part of this project was a new centralized control room, which now controls all four ASUs.
Air Products has increased its storage capacity at Newcastle as well as increasing the truck-loading facilities.
While the new plant is delivering gas to Arcelor Mittal, it is also supplying merchant products to Air Products other customers. The Newcastle site now manufactures liquid nitrogen, liquid oxygen and liquid argon, which is trucked to customers in the KwaZulu-Natal region specifically. In some cases, the argon is delivered as far afield as Mpumalanga. With the new plant, KwaZulu-Natal customers continue to be assured continuity of supply, while Air Products benefits from not having to transport liquid product from Gauteng.
Feedback from the client, so far, has been positive in that the project went well.
Looking to the future of the Newcastle site, with the level of infrastructural spend planned for the country, it is anticipated that Newcastle will be one of the better-placed steelworks in terms of demand.
The upgrade of Air Products Newcastle site and the expansion of its capacity is very much an investment for the future. It is a vote of confidence in the future of ArcelorMittal, Air Products and South Africa.
Published on August 13, 2009 in Company News, Spotlight |
Air Products celebrates 40 years of service excellence
On March 12, this year, the people of Air Products took pride in celebrating the companys 40th year in business. After 40 years, the company is a vigorous, youthful entity, with an unflagging commitment to serving its customers. The question is: how has the company retained this level of energetic service? The answer is simple. At all times, the company focuses its efforts on customer service, and strives to develop ways of serving them better. Since 1969, this ethos has been inculcated into every Air Products person, past and present. It is often said in the company, that if one does not serve the customer directly, then one must provide a service to those who do serve the customers.
Innovation is the tool that has served the company for 40 years. It is this drive for innovation that has seen the company quadrupling in size since its inception.
Forty years ago, the company had a very sound and profitable long-term contract. Without too much effort, Air Products could have continued at this scale of operations. However, from the outset, the company has been served by people who have always delivered their utmost efforts in search of continuous improvement. The often repeated slogan that what was good enough for yesterday, may not be good enough today, remains as true now as it was in 1969.
From being a provider of an over the fence gas supply to one of South Africas industrial majors, the company has diversified. Today, it is a force to be reckoned with in the supply of Packaged Gas and also provides a Speciality Gas service that is of unmatched quality. While innovation is constantly applied to improving customer service, it has also seen the company developing revolutionary products such as “Freshline for the Food and Beverage market. This last innovation is currently changing the way food and beverages are packaged and marketed in a profoundly beneficial way.
An important strength in the company is the men and women who serve Air Products customers every day. When recruiting, Air Products selects the best, and once a person is employed, the company invests substantially to retain this individuals services for the extended benefit of the company. Through its history, Air Products has been lead by only three Managing Directors. The first MD was Geoff Prevett, who was, in turn, followed by Alan Cooper. Today, a man steeped in Air Products philosophy, Mike Hellyar, continues to lead the company forward. So as Air Products looks to the decades to come, it will be the commitment of its people and the strength of its leadership that takes the company through the current economic uncertainty and on to an every more prosperous future.
Published on March 12, 2009 in Company News, Spotlight |
Air Products Cold Box
Air Products, SA’s largest industrial gas producer, is currently carrying out a multi million Rand expansion and refurbishment project at its Newcastle plant. As part of this project, it has imported and transported a fully assembled cold box for cryogenic air separation. The cold box is essentially a huge structural steel box containing fractional distillation columns and heat exchangers. It is the first and largest of its type ever to be brought into South Africa. Mechtech attended to the lifting in Newcastle and spoke to Corrie Topham Air Products Contractor, Harry van Lieshout Air Products Projects Manager and Sibusiso Sibisi Air Products Newcastle Plant Manager.
Air separation technology lifted in Newcastle
Air Products’ Newcastle plant has been providing a continuous supply of oxygen to the ArcelorMittal steel plant for the past 38 years – currently via three existing Air Separation Units (ASU’s) which produce Oxygen, Nitrogen and Argon gases. Oxygen is used extensively in the steelmaking process for its ability to produce high combustion temperatures, and for the removal of impurities such as Carbon and Sulphur – with over 1 000 tons being required every day to produce thousands of tons of finished steel at the Newcastle plant. Nitrogen and Argon are also used in the steelmaking process for inert blanketing, or for stirring of hot molten metals.
The new Air Separation Unit which is under construction (with it’s massive cold box) – is part of a contractual agreement between ArcelorMittal and Air Products to increase steel production as a result of the reline of blast furnace N5 and the upgrade of the sister plant – a component of ArcelorMittal SA’s capacity expansion programme to increase its local steel production. Output from Newcastle’s N5 plant is set to increase significantly.
Air Products’ Project Manager, Harry Van Lieshout, tells us that the goal is to make sure that ArcelorMittal has the additional oxygen capacity on-stream by December 08.
S’bu (Facility Manager) takes us to the existing gas plant and shows us a sample of liquid Nitrogen – a clear slowly bubbling liquid and only the frost around the rim of the flask indicates how cold it is.
He spills some onto the concrete, which dissipates instantly leaving no trace.
“These three existing ASU’s were commissioned in the 1970′s” Van Lieshout continues, “so they are undergoing an extensive refurbishment to ensure that they continue to perform reliably and efficiently,
although they will still be less efficient than a new ASU.
He explains further: “The Oxygen produced by the older units is produced at low pressures, and has to be compressed further to get it to the required pressure for steelmaking. The Oxygen compressors are
specialized and costly pieces of equipment, and use a considerable amount of energy. The new plant will produce the Oxygen at high pressure directly off the cold box, by vaporizing pumped liquid Oxygen
against a warm high pressure air stream. The whole process is more energy efficient.”
S’bu takes us into the plant control room -a relatively simple office with two flat screens showing plant data on a graphical interface. The liquid oxygen storage tank level is showing several hundreds of tons of product, just above half a day’s capacity. “Most of the oxygen is taken straight to the furnaces but we store significant amounts of liquid products for plant back-up”.
He then shows us the old control room, a room full of controls and meters. “When I started working for the company in 2005, they brought me in here and I nearly cried,” says Sibisi. Air Products has now upgraded the entire control system, and has standardised on the Siemens/Moore digital control system at all of its plants in the world in an effort to simplify training and to ensure that any technician from anywhere in the world can be sent to maintain any plant.
Van Lieshout takes us back over to the new plant site and tells us how it works. “There are 12 main gases in air but the three dominant ones are Nitrogen, at 78%, Argon at nearly 1% and around 21% Oxygen. This
unit is called an Air Separation Unit (ASU) because it separates the air into its three main components by fractional distillation of liquefied air. This is possible because of the different boiling points of the Oxygen, Nitrogen and Argon. The technology is similar to the way crude oil is separated into petrol, diesel, waxes, etc., except that they work at very low temperatures,” he explains.
He points towards a large motor/generator attached to some piping 10 metres away from the cold-box unit. “The air is subjected to five main processes namely filtration, compression, purification, cooling and distillation. The cooling is achieved by expanding a portion of the air from a high pressure to a low pressure in a turbo-expander. The pressure-drop causes the gas to release energy so it cools down. A similar thing happens when you release gas from an aerosol can, the gas gets cold as soon as it comes out because it expands. We recover the energy by generating electricity, although this is a small amount of energy relative to the plant’s consumption”, he explains.
We ask about the compressors. Topham takes us into an acoustic enclosure with a square air-intake duct with 10 metres sides at one end. “This is the main air compressor,” he says, showing us a set of large green heat exchangers with spiral volutes attached to them. “The machine is a three stage Turbo Compressor driven by an 11kV induction motor”, Topham informs us. “The heat exchangers are intercoolers which remove the heat of compression from the air between the three stages.,” he explains. “A portion of the air is compressed to a higher pressure in a separate booster air compressor.,” he adds pointing to a similar line of connected plant machinery alongside. “The compression plant requires a significant amount of process cooling water which is generated in a cooling tower alongside the unit”.
“After compression, the air is scrubbed and cooled by direct contact with chilled water in a tall vertical contacting column”. Van Lieshout then explains were the chilled water comes from. “We get the water cold by evaporative cooling using waste Nitrogen gas from the distillation system – the absolute dryness of the Nitrogen gives it a huge evaporative potential, and therefore the ability to cool the water to as low as 4 degrees”, he continues. The scrubbed and cooled air is then further purified by passing it through a molecular sieve adsorbtion system”. He points to two very large cylindrical pressure vessels side by side. “These are both filled with molecular sieve granules which are specially formulated to absorb moisture, CO2 and other contaminants from the feed air. The granules act like a sponge and remove contaminants which would solidify and block the plant at cryogenic temperatures,” he says. “Another function of the purification stage is the removal of airborne hydrocarbons, which would create an explosion hazard if allowed to enter the distillation section of the plant,” he informs us.
We ask how long the granules last. “The granules are continually regenerated and are reusable,” responds Van Lieshout, “Air is purified in one vessel while the other is undergoing regeneration. The vessels are periodically switched from service to regeneration mode. Therefore as one vessel becomes contaminated we swap over to the other vessel which has been regenerated. Regeneration is done by passing a stream
of heated waste nitrogen through the granules.”
“After purification the air enters the cold box where it is cooled down to approximately minus 180 Degrees – which is it’s liquefaction temperature. At this point the air is introduced into the first of several distillation columns. A distillation column basically consists of a tall vertical vessel filled with sieve trays or structured packing. The packing has the function of bringing the liquid and vapour fractions into direct contact with each other, so that heat can be exchanged between the liquid and vapour fractions. Typically the rising vapours heat-up a falling droplets of liquid air. Nitrogen, having the lowest boiling point of the three gases, evaporates fairly readily and concentrates-up in the rising vapour stream until it is withdrawn at the top of the column. Oxygen is less volatile and tends to be condensed into the liquid phase by the falling liquid stream. It’s therefore withdrawn from the bottom of the distillation column.
Several stages of distillation are required to reach the required purity and a modern air separation plant will typically have three or more distillation columns. Argon has a boiling point between that of Nitrogen and Oxygen and is withdrawn as a side-stream part way up one of the distillation columns” he explains.
“The whole process is very, very cold so another key feature of cryogenic distillation is the need to have very good insulation,” continues Van Lieshout. “We use expanded perlite – perlite is a mineral substance which when exposed to heat expands somewhat like popcorn. We fill the entire cold box with very fine granules of perlite to insulate the process vessels and piping from ambient heat. ”
What makes it so much more efficient, we ask. “It’s a combination of factors. For example, compressors have become more efficient as a result of advancements in computing power, which have made it possible to design and build more aerodynamically efficient turbo machines. Also, improvements in structured packing materials used in the distillation columns have reduced the pressure required to drive the air through the process. All of these factors contribute to a more energy efficient plant. Energy recovery is also important,” he tells us, “and we look for opportunities to improve. The turbo expander, which produces the cold temperatures, for example, drives a generator that puts electricity back onto our electrical system,” he advises.
The cold box was finally lifted into place on Sunday September 14 by two Target cranes. A 750 ton lattice boom crane with a 28 metre radius was built up to lift the top-end by 58 metres, while a 440 ton extended boom, tail-end crane was used to hold the base off the ground while it was slid across and rotated into place. The whole process took three hours.
“Now we have to get it producing gas by mid to late December,” concludes Van Lieshout.
Published on January 21, 2009 in Company News, Spotlight |
MAP Congress 2008
Modified Atmospheric Packaging (MAP) Congress 2008.
Date: 13 October 2008
Venue: Radisson Hotel, 100 Beach Road, Granger Bay, Cape Town
Published on September 22, 2008 in Spotlight |
Out and About in October
PROPAK
14 16 October 2008
Opening times: 09h00 – 17h00
Cape Town International Convention Centre, Cape Town
http://www.specialised.com/exhibits/propakcape/introduction.htm
Air Products Freshline Congress
13th October 2008
Radison Hotel, Cape Town
For more information contact
Gillian Taylor
011 570 5156 or email taylorg@apsap.co.za
Published on July 21, 2008 in Event & Exhibition News, Spotlight |