https://www.engineeringnews.co.za

On-The-Air (08/08/2014)

safm

8th August 2014

By: Martin Creamer

Creamer Media Editor

  

Font size: - +

AMLive anchor Sakina Kamwendo on Friday presented another Update From The Coalface with Martin Creamer, publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly.


Kamwendo: South Africa stands to benefit richly from the huge technical breakthrough in the strike-hit platinum sector.

Creamer: There’s been a fabulous breakthrough in platinum. We mine platinum, but we don’t often market platinum. We’ve started marketing it recently and there’s been a big aspiration for fuel cells, because this could be the answer to energy, clean energy for the world to come, but there’s always been a problem with hydrogen and storing the hydrogen.

Of course, the Germans don’t only win the world cup of soccer, but give them a research, and brother they break through! There has been a massive breakthrough from a German university saying, why worry about these very high pressures that you have to keep hydrogen stored at? 700 Bar,  we are not talking about bars that you drink at. It also has to be kept at cryogenic temperatures, 250º always been a problem. “Don’t worry about that, just mix it with liquid.” The molecules of the hydrogen attached to the liquid. 

You get the liquid organic carrier of hydrogen.  Now why didn’t I think of that? The Germans have thought of that.  It means you can treat the storage of hydrogen just like we treat the storage of diesel or the storage of oil.  You can distribute it the same way. So, a massive breakthrough that could really open a window of opportunity here which could create many, many jobs, a lot of activity.

Hopes are really rising, but then on the other end, you saw in the Free State, Godfrey Oliphant, also with Anglo American platinum, opened an area for 34 households there where they will have electricity, from a fuel cell, this time using methanol.  So we can see that off grid, 1,4-million people who don’t have electricity, they are in the rural areas.  You know that  Eskom has all that electricity going through, but in the areas outside of that, you can use a fuel cell as we saw this week, in the Free State. 

Kamwendo: The black-led company Bushveld Minerals is taking on the giants with its vigorous foray into vanadium mining in Limpopo province.

Creamer: Again, vanadium is used to strengthen steel, but now it’s also going into the energy space, and we see a big buzz around vanadium. We supply 23% of the world’s vanadium.  There’s already a big demand, because China has said all the rebar, the steel, that you use in reinforcing for construction, must now have vanadium.  So that has set things going. 

Now we have this black-led company, Bushveld Minerals, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange under the AIM saying, we’ve got a plan and we want to move it fast, because this week alone we saw the Brazilians come forward with vanadium, we see the Australians starting to come forward with vanadium. 

South Africa’s big position in keeping this needs to be retained and they’ve said, “okay, we got this vanadium in the past from the western limb and the eastern limb, but, we’re going to the northern limb where its much richer and they’re talking the best grade of vanadium in the world. So, again that energy side where vanadium can be used to store electricity is coming to the fore with the demand. It could be a great business for us again, vanadium, because as the Americans say, electricity is the biggest supply chain without a warehouse. 

Electricity just keeps coming out, you can’t store it. Now we’ve got a storage opportunity with the use of vanadium which is creating demand. 

Kamwendo: Finally, a word about Royal Bafokeng Platinum, what’s happening there?

Creamer:Black-owned and black-led Royal Bafokeng Platinum has thumbed its nose at the platinum strike, lifting its productivity to record heights during that strike period. Here we have this mine, in the Rustenburg belt, which was so troubled. A no-work belt. 

These guys became a will-work belt, lifting their productivity 3% and 5% and saying, “Yes, we will work on public holidays, and it benefits us to do so and we will align ourselves with the objectives of the business plan, because we make money out of it.”

That is the National Union of Mineworkers, and the chief there Papi Moteti smiled when he showed me on his cell phone the pictures of the new houses that are being built there for the workers. 

He’s saying, “get rid of the hostel era, we want our families here at the mine, it also increases our productivity, and increases our intention to work and get rid of all the problems in the platinum belt.” 

Kamwendo: Martin Creamer is publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly. He’ll be back At The Coalface at the same time next Friday.

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

Comments

Showroom

Showroom image
Alcohol Breathalysers

Supplier & Distributor of the Widest Range of Accurate & Easy-to-Use Alcohol Breathalysers

VISIT SHOWROOM 
WearCheck
WearCheck

Leading condition monitoring specialists, WearCheck, help boost machinery lifespan and reduce catastrophic component failure through the scientific...

VISIT SHOWROOM 

Latest Multimedia

sponsored by

Photo of Martin Creamer
On-The-Air (15/03/2024)
15th March 2024 By: Martin Creamer
Magazine round up | 15 March 2024
Magazine round up | 15 March 2024
15th March 2024

Option 1 (equivalent of R125 a month):

Receive a weekly copy of Creamer Media's Engineering News & Mining Weekly magazine
(print copy for those in South Africa and e-magazine for those outside of South Africa)
Receive daily email newsletters
Access to full search results
Access archive of magazine back copies
Access to Projects in Progress
Access to ONE Research Report of your choice in PDF format

Option 2 (equivalent of R375 a month):

All benefits from Option 1
PLUS
Access to Creamer Media's Research Channel Africa for ALL Research Reports, in PDF format, on various industrial and mining sectors including Electricity; Water; Energy Transition; Hydrogen; Roads, Rail and Ports; Coal; Gold; Platinum; Battery Metals; etc.

Already a subscriber?

Forgotten your password?

MAGAZINE & ONLINE

SUBSCRIBE

RESEARCH CHANNEL AFRICA

SUBSCRIBE

CORPORATE PACKAGES

CLICK FOR A QUOTATION







sq:0.081 0.13s - 155pq - 2rq
Subscribe Now