⎪ PowerGen,PetroChem and Sustainable energy management ⎪
WEG has sophisticated software tools that enable the development of complex turbine designs tailored to the application.
failures,” he advises. He says the advantage of a turbine is that it runs continuously without needing to be stopped and restarted. It takes two days for a typical turbine to cool before any work can be done on it, and several hours to return it to temperature before it can be reloaded. “While turbines are a continuous power solution designed for minimum intervention, they still need to be properly and regularly maintained to guarantee maximum efficiency, reliability and life,” Gerrard points out. “We have turbines in the power generation industry that have been producing power for over 40 years. What we supply are smaller, industrial versions of these turbines, which puts us in the market for sugar, pulp and paper and petrochemical applications,” he says. Waste-to-energy applications Waste-to-energy applications have become very exciting for us in recent times. Here, WEG targets the 200-800 kW range for plants with access to a waste stream that can be burned to generate energy. Some operations generate leftover wood from furniture manufacturing, medical waste from hospitals, or food waste from hotels, all of which can be used to create steam and, via a turbine, generate power. “Furthermore, we are also active in the sugar industry, where sugar plants have long been using bagasse, and paper mills that use biomass to create power,” he notes. WEG has a comprehensive market presence and extensive experience in both the sugar and pulp and paper industries, which we can leverage to develop the sub- Saharan African market,” says Gerrard. The changing market Gerrard is seeing significant shifts in the mar - ket. “When we started this business, it was ac- ceptable for OEMs to have a third party doing installations and services, with the OEM only
responsible for the supervision. Now, clients want the OEM to take full responsibility for an installation and the after-market servicing of the assets.” This makes sense, he says. Steam turbine systems are high-value, technically complex systems. Turbine engineering is a precise sci- ence with a specialised skill set required for servicing, and it isn’t easy to find specialist turbine engineers. While turbines are simple in that they turn the rotor using steam, he continues, the intricacy of sealing, blade designs and steam quality makes them highly complex. WEG has sophisticated software tools that enable the development of turbine designs that best fit the application. “We have experience in a wide range of client processes, including the use of waste process steam, optimising the performance of the machines clients already have, and upgrading and optimising fuel ef- ficiency,” he notes.
“And now, we can also offer long-term services for these turbine systems, whether the client is using a WEG system or any other brand, no matter how old. Many of the machines in Africa have been running without proper support. OEMs, ownership, and personnel have changed, and operators often don’t even have drawings for their machines. “We can scan all the parts of a machine to create the CAD manufacturing draw- ings, which enables us to remanufacture OEM-quality spares for anyone’s machines, facilitating proper after-market support and promoting increased machine operational life-cycles. “We are planning further capital invest- ments in modern machinery and tooling to improve our local servicing capabilities. And anything we can’t do here yet can be done by WEG in Brazil,” concludes Gerrard. https://www.weg.net/institutional/ZA/en/
Left: Fully equipped mobile turbine workshops enable WEG Turbine Services to service steam turnbines and generators on site. Right: Using laser scanning technology, WEG Turbine Services can scan all parts of a machine to create CAD manufacturing drawings required to remanufacture OEM-quality spares for any machine.
January-February 2025 • MechChem Africa ¦ 13
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