Tag Archives: Charl Marais

Trollope Mining Services boosting southern African reputation with Metso hybrid crushers and screens

Amid growing demand for its crushing and screening services, Trollope Mining Services, one of the largest open-pit mining contractors in Africa, has continued to increase its fleet of Metso machines from Pilot Crushtec, the South Africa-based company says.

With nearly 500 pieces of equipment in its fleet, Trollope has over the years established itself as the go-to contractor in the open-pit mining sector in southern Africa, it says. Currently operating in South Africa, Namibia and Botswana, the company has also previously executed projects in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Guinea. The company operates across commodities including but not limited to coal, platinum, copper, andalusite, gold, phosphate, lithium, iron ore, manganese, diamonds and limestone.

To establish itself as a total solutions provider in the mining contracting fraternity, Trollope Mining Services added a crushing and screening division to its business in 2016. Managing Director, Guy Hopkins, says that in the past three years the division has seen exponential growth on the back of some major projects, necessitating an expansion of the crushing and screening fleet.

Following the fleet expansion program, Trollope Mining Services now operates a total of 15 machines. Of note is that the whole fleet is made up of only Metso machines.

“We prefer Metso machines because of our experience with the equipment,” Hopkins says. “Fundamentally, the design and build quality of these machines are unmatched. Our buying decision is also influenced by the technological evolution of the Metso offering, which allows us to run ‘hands off’ operations. Apart from improved efficiencies, technology paves the way for improved safety on mining sites.”

Of its 15 Metso machines, six are dual-powered units, making Trollope Mining Services the biggest operator of Metso hybrid crushers and screens in southern Africa, confirms Charl Marais, Sales Manager at Pilot Crushtec. The dual-power fleet comprises two Lokotrack® LT120E™ jaw crushers, a Lokotrack LT330D™ cone crusher and three Lokotrack ST2.8E™ scalping screens. These were expressly purchased for a project in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa.

With their ability to have both electricity and diesel as power sources, Marais says dual-power solutions provide the best of both worlds – significant fuel savings and a marked reduction in carbon emissions. “Significant cost reduction is achieved when the machines are connected to the grid,” he explains.

Hopkins added: “Given the high cost of diesel, dual-powered solutions help reduce operating costs for our customers. In our experience, the cost of running bi-power machines off the grid is 1/20 the cost of running them off a diesel engine. There is therefore a major cost benefit for our customers’ operations.”

Apart from the Metso build quality, Hopkins says the aftermarket support from Pilot Crushtec is crucial to ensuring high uptime.

“In all our buying decisions, having a partner that we can trust for the long term is fundamental,” he said. “Pilot Crushtec plays a crucial role in supporting us with all the necessary spares and technical expertise to keep our Metso machines running.”

ABB and Hydrogen Optimized to study large-scale green hydrogen production systems

ABB and Hydrogen Optimized have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to explore the development of large-scale green hydrogen production systems connected to the electrical grid to offer a clean, sustainable and affordable energy source for industries such as mining.

Hydrogen Optimized has ambitions to use its high current water electrolysis technology at scale to produce green hydrogen for emerging clean applications across industries, including chemical, utility and transportation. ABB’s hydrogen research team, meanwhile, will explore electrical power supply optimisation through projects involving ABB high power rectifier (HPR) systems.

Together, the companies plan to prove that Hydrogen Optimized’s RuggedCell™ water electrolysis technology can be used to develop an integrated product solution based on a 100 MW single module plant design concept, they said.

Within ABB’s HPR range, rectifier systems provide DC current in the range of 5,000 A to 550,000 A, as single or multiple units and, as such, can provide nearly unlimited current and voltage combinations and meet most plant specific requirements, the company says.

“ABB is a world leader in the control and electrification solutions designed for large-scale electrochemical processes,” Andrew TB Stuart, President and CEO of Hydrogen Optimized (pictured), said. “Such technology is an excellent fit with our patent pending RuggedCell. Together these technologies create a continuous reduction in the installed capital cost as the scale of the green hydrogen project increases.

“Our joint work will lay the foundations for single-plant sizes up to the hundreds of MWs input power range. Demonstrating the scalability of these two key components of a water electrolysis installation is vital to economic green hydrogen and we are excited about the potential benefits for customers.”

The MoU signed by the companies formalises the agreement to explore the implementation of a demonstration system as well as the preparation of a 100 MW plant design and commercialisation strategies, the two said.

Charl Marais, Global Product Manager, Process Industries, ABB, said: “This project plays to our strengths of building large, highly efficient, customised HPR systems, pushing the boundaries of what is possible from one rectifier unit. Based on our many years of experience in providing control and electrical system solutions for electrochemical industries, we understand that HPR systems have the characteristics required for successful large-scale project deployment.

“This collaboration advances the commercial availability and feasibility of large-scale green hydrogen systems. We have been exploring this type of project for more than two years and the synergies with Hydrogen Optimized have been very apparent. We have a clear vision, and the results could be significant.”

Applications using green hydrogen include zero-emission transportation fuel supply, ammonia and other chemical production with non-fossil sources of hydrogen, and green metal production with hydrogen instead of a coking-type process, the companies say.