Page 10 - AfrElec Week 18

AfrElec COAL-FIRED GENERATION AfrElec
Eskom admits to emissions problems at Kendal power plant
SOUTH AFRICA
ESKOM has acknowledged that it committed a number of environmental breaches at its coal- fired Kendal power station, with emissions levels breaking agreed limits.
The utility advised that it was in the process of mending the technical faults that had led to the breaches of environmental regulations. The station has been operating above the national emission limits since strike action late in 2018 left its infrastructure vandalised and damaged.
Eskom said that completing the required upgrades would take some time, as a significant amount of repair work is required to repair the generation units.
“Given the generation system constraints, Eskom will, as speedily as possible, execute the work on one unit at a time. Eskom is commit- ted to addressing the emission issues at Kendal power station and is in the process of doing so,” Eskom said in a statement.
An instruction to shut down the three units currently operating in non-compliance will result in significant constraints on the power generation system and would significantly increase the level of loadshedding required, Eskom advised.
Eskom had previously said that it was
carrying out some maintenance work during the current lockdown, but admitted that major cap- ital projects could be delayed, as it is now faced with delays in sourcing equipment, especially from abroad.
As Kendal, the 2018 strike action left many internal parts of the Electrostatic Precipitator (ESP) vandalised. This meant that the dust-han- dling plant could no longer function properly.
Eskom must now take the plant’s generating units offline one after the other in order to carry out repairs.
Unit 1 has been operating since February 18, 2020, within the 100mg/Nm3 emission limit after a 14-day outage. Unit 2 is also operating within the regulatory compliance limits.
Unit 5 is currently off and repairs on the ESPs and dust-handling plant have started.
However, owing to long lead times to manu- facture components it is anticipated that the unit will only return to service during the first quarter of 2021.
The next planned outage will be Unit 6. Units 3, 4 and 6 are currently operating above the emis- sion limits, for which Eskom has been granted an extension. The plant’s six units each boast 686MW of nameplate capacity. ™
GAS-FIRED GENERATION
Ethiopia commissions gas-processing study
ETHIOPIA
THE Ethiopian Petroleum Ministry has com- missioned a study from US-based firm Green- Comm Technologies into how Ethiopia’s gas resources can be used to produce various fuels.
An agreement was signed by the ministry and GreenComm covering a year-long study.
Specifically, the study will evaluate the devel- opment of a gas processing plant. South Korea’s Hyundai Engineering and Construction is collaborating in the project, according to the ministry.
The cost of the plant is initially assessed at $3.6bn. The study will weigh up the feasibility of using gas resources at six sites. These include the Calub and Hilala fields in the Ogaden Basin in Ethiopia’s Somali region, which Chinese firm POLY-GCL Petroleum is currently developing.
Gas could be supplied to the plant and then processed to produce liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), jet fuel and petrochemicals, the ministry said.
Ethiopia is estimated to have roughly 25bn cubic metres in proven gas reserves. The
country found extensive gas deposits in its east- ern Ogaden Basin in the 1970s, but has been unable to monetise them owing to decades of war and political upheaval. Finding a route to market for the resources was also an issue.
POLY-GCL signed production-sharing deals to exploit the Calub and Hilala fields in 2013.
The Chinese firm finished appraisal wells at the sites in 2016, and the following year signed a memorandum with neighbouring Djibouti on building a pipeline to pump Ethiopia’s gas to the small Horn of Africa nation. It also planned to build a liquefaction terminal at Damerjog, near Djibouti’s border with Somalia. The project was valued at $4bn.
Djibouti and Ethiopia then signed an inter- governmental agreement on the pipeline in February last year. At the time, POLY-GCL was expected to launch production at Calub and Hilali in 2020, several years behind schedule.
POLY-GCL is a joint venture between state- owned China POLY Group and privately owned Hong Kong-based Golden Concord Group.™
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 18 07•May•2020