South African generator set (genset) designer and manufacturer Diesel Electric Services (DES), has secured a contract for a permanent, high- pressure gas connection that will allow it to test natural gas-powered engines with greater flexibility.

The connection will give DES access to natural gas reticulator Egoli Gas’s network in Johannesburg to enable DES clients to test the engines at the company’s premises in Johannesburg.

A gas pipeline has already been laid to the company’s 23 000 m2 premises; however, details are still being finalised before the installation is completed. This is expected to occur within the next two weeks.

Compared with the old method of using compressed natural gas from banks of cylinders, DES’s new testing procedure is far more convenient and cost effective.

“In the past, when we sold the gensets, the gas generator would go to the client’s premises without prior testing. This [high-pressure gas connection] will open up a whole new marketing strategy for the company,” DES industrial engineer Philip Chittenden tells Engineering News.

“Already we have had many consultants setting up bookings . . . to see the systems running, as they are not freely available to the market,” he added.

Further, DES engineer Alain Bonfrer notes that Egoli Gas has allocated the company a special meter, which is normally deployed at Egoli’s high- volume users’ facilities. “It allows us to monitor and log gas consumption more accurately. We can use the meter to see how much energy a genset is using and, in that way, we [will be able to] work out efficiencies.”

He explains that the engine, which usually has its own gas train, will be brought into the workshop. “On the electrical side, we hook this engine up to what is known as dummy loads. This provides the load and can be adjusted in kilowatt values, measuring how much electrical energy the genset is generating,” Bonfrer says.

“We believe we are the only genset manufacturer in the country that has access to a natural gas pipeline,” he notes.

Challenging Environment
In light of the recent electricity crisis, many companies will also be looking to switch to natural- gas-powered generators for continuous baseload or standby applications. “Egoli is doing very well at the moment, as it is competing with electricity.”

However, Chittenden points out that the company could possibly face gas supply constraints, as Egoli Gas’s gas supply agreement with Sasol is capped.

Egoli Gas receives several million gigajoules of gas from Sasol each year.

“We have been in discussion with Egoli Gas on a number of projects and have been working on their network; however, they have a fixed amount of gas and will reach that cap at some point. Egoli is always asking for more, so it is a bit of a struggle on their side.

If all those projects [currently still in discussion phase] come to fruition, there would not be enough gas supply,” he adds.

However, they remain positive, noting that, as demand for gas supply increases, hopefully, Egoli’s cap will be raised.

Biogas
Bonfrer, meanwhile, notes that the company is contracted to generate electricity from biogas from a chicken farm. “Another company will be responsible for the gas production. Our scope starts when the gas comes from the scrubbing – we receive biogas of a certain quality and quantity and then generate electricity. We then recover the heat from the genset, which is used in processes elsewhere,” he says.

“Hopefully, this is the start of a much bigger roll-out from the same company,” he adds.