As part of its continuous drive to reduce energy use amid increasing electricity costs, tyre manufacturer Continental Tyre South Africa (CTSA) has installed a new coal-fired boiler house at its Port Elizabeth plant.

The R65-million boiler renewal project was initiated in 2012, and completed and commissioned at the end of 2014. The resultant boiler house will generate process steam for the tyre plant.

Construction of the boiler house, which included orders for civil works and equipment, started in 2013 and the facility was equipped with four 10.5 t John Thompson package boilers. The boiler house was ready to start steam production by November 2014, when the first boiler came on line. Since then, the boilers have been enhanced to operate at full efficiency and can now provide a stable supply of steam pressure to the plant at a significantly reduced cost.

“CTSA considers not only cost reduction but also energy and efficiency. “The new boiler house investment has brought a 60% cost reduction in steam generation,” says CTSA manufacturing GM Wayne Brown.

The new boilers comply with all environmental standards and, as an added benefit, the ash by-product from the coal is transported to a local brick maker to help with the manufacturing of clay bricks.

“Over the past five years, CTSA has reduced its energy consumption by 25%,” says Brown, adding that this project has enabled CTSA to create eight new permanent, full-time jobs for four boiler operators and four boiler assistants.

CTSA has been contractually tied since 2003 to an outsourced steam supplier that supplied the full complement of steam to the plant through one electric boiler and two heavy furnace oil (HFO) boilers.

While the electric boiler was the primary source of steam generation, the HFO boilers were used as a backup supply during peak electricity demand. Although the company con- tinued to use the steam generated by the outsourced steam supplier, the cost of electricity has increased significantly since the contract was signed, making it uneconomical to generate steam through these methods.

By 2013, the outsourced steam supplier was simply unable to supply steam at a cost-effective rate.

However, CTSA initiated an investigation into a more cost- effective means of generating steam in 2012 and has been considering several fuel sources, including natural gas, coal and biomass.

Brown explains that, while the first choice for boiler fuel was natural gas, the infrastructure in Port Elizabeth does not allow for a natural gas pipeline to the plant, where natural gas could be used as a fuel source for the boilers. Therefore, it was decided to use coal, as it proved to be the most cost-effective fuel source to generate steam. As a result of these findings, it was decided to construct a boiler house on site at CTSA.