ELB, ESKOM COLLABORATE ON STABILISING MEDUPI DUST PLANT

ELB Engineering
Services has been successful in assisting State-owned Eskom’s Medupi power station,
in Limpopo, to bring the dust handling plants under control, the company
announced this week.

Now that the plant is in a more stable
condition, ELB has
implemented a preventive maintenance strategy, which is expected to help
increase the availability and performance of the plant, thereby allowing units
2 and 3 at Medupi to continue putting power on the grid without any substantial
delays.

Since January, ELB has been
assisting with the operation and maintenance of units 2 and 3 at the dust
handling plant and ash storage Silo 1, during a time when the embattled power
utility’s systems were under pressure.

Owing to numerous technical and maintainability
issues, which ELB said was
“outside the control of Eskom”, both parties worked to overcome these
challenges.

Since the start of the year, ELB’s operation
and maintenance teams, in conjunction with Eskom, have managed to contain the
dust leaks and replace faulty equipment with minimum outages of the two units
to ensure supply of power to the grid.

The plant has since then largely been returned to a
stable condition and any dust emissions are repaired immediately, ELB said,
adding that this “ensures a clean plant and negates any health and safety
issues”.

As a result, availability and performance of the
plant has increased to “a reasonable level”.

ELB’s maintenance
team was led by a team of ELB engineers
who have extensive experience in dust handling systems, and who worked with the
maintenance crews at the “coal face” to ensure that the correct work was
prioritised.

ELB’s team also
provided suggestions on how to optimise the system’s performance and
continuously reviewed work procedures, which led to a reduction in the time
taken to complete maintenance tasks.

The joint team – comprising members from ELB and Eskom Medupi – had the common goal of ensuring that the units could provide the maximum amount of power onto the grid. https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/elb-eskom-collaborate-on-stabilising-medupi-dust-plant-2019-07-26/rep_id:4136