14 Jun 2004 :

SPRINGS-based Air Cleaning Equipment was successful in winning a R4.5-million dust control contract at Atlantis Foundries in Cape Town in the face of stiff competition from rival contenders - to a large extent because it came up with an innovative solution to a difficult problem when tendering for the job, the company says. The Daimler-Chrysler-owned producer of engine blocks mainly for export was looking to replace wet scrubbers with bag filters in the sand recovery portion of its sand handling plant as part of an overall modernisation and upgrade of the 21-year-old plant.

The problem they faced was that they had to get the job done in double-quick time, with installation and pre-commissioning having to be completed during the three-week December shutdown,” explains Des Tuck, Air Cleaning Equipment’s general manager.

“They had a number of tenders, including one from a German-based company, but we were the only contractor that came up with a solution that was workable within the extremely tight time constraint.” The innovative solution that Air Cleaning Equipment devised was to design a filter bag system to be installed in a different location than the existing wet scrubber system. “This meant we could install and pre-commission the bag filter system before the shutdown while the plant was still running. During the shutdown itself we only had to install the ducting - so the system was ready for operation when production resumed,” Tuck says.

The success of the contract also hinged on the company’s ability to meet the extremely short lead time of only four months it had been allowed from date of order to manufacture, deliver and install the bag filter unit.

“That was about two months less than what we would normally consider the minimum lead time for such a job. It was a tough call, but we were confident we could make it and we did,” Tuck says, adding that dust counts in the working areas have been reduced by as much as a factor of 10.

Says Andre Wildschut, Atlantis Foundries’ projects engineer: “This meant that we could prepare the new site without disrupting the present operation. Foundations and trestles were therefore established before the shutdown, ready to receive the new plant.”

The dust collection equipment manufactured, supplied and installed by Air Cleaning Equipment comprised two HMB filters with a capacity of 18 cu m/sec each.