With an investment from the Industrial Development Corporation, South Africa Calcium Carbide (SACC), South Africa’s sole producer of calcium carbide and a key player in the global calcium carbide market supplying the steel, welding, and other industries with this essential product, has built a cogeneration plant that will cut its electricity bill and help the environment.

Going green is encouraged around the world and plenty of companies in South Africa are answering the call. SACC is one such company, putting the environment centre stage. With the assistance from the IDC, the SACC has opened a multi-million rand 8MW cogeneration (cogen) plant in the picturesque town of Newcastle in KwaZulu-Natal, where it is based.

Established at a cost of R105 million, the plant will partly protect SACC against rising electricity prices but it will also help the strained South African power grid by reducing demand, which allowed it to qualify for a grant from Eskom’s Integrated Demand Management programme for energy efficiency, says the IDC.

Speaking at the launch, Geoffrey Qhena, the IDC’s chief executive, said: “It is also environmentally positive as it will reduce greenhouse gas carbon dioxide emissions by more than 45 000 tons per annum.”

SACC is Africa’s only producer of calcium carbide, which is used in the desulphurisation of steel and in the production of acetylene. Acetylene is mainly used for welding. “The production of calcium carbide, used in the welding, cutting and steelmaking industries, is an energy-intensive business. As Africa’s sole producer of this product, SACC at full capacity uses about 50MW of electricity, or half of Newcastle’s power capacity,” added Qhena.

Electricity is the single biggest input cost of production at SACC and the cogen plant will cut the annual bill of more than R100 million by about 15 per cent. The plant has four GE Jenbacher engine sets, funded by the IDC, having a generation capacity of 8MW in total.

“Technically, the project is cutting edge, combining state-of-the-art gas engine electrical generators and advanced gas cleaning and conditioning systems. The engines demand that the furnace off-gas is extremely clean, which provides an optimal environmental benefit of the project,” explained Tony Stalberg, SACC’s project design and technical manager.

Qhena added: “Cogeneration – the use of waste, whether solids, liquids, or gas as fuels, or simply using waste heat – in industries makes them more energy efficient and lowers their costs, while reducing environmental harm.”

The cogen plant will create about 300 direct jobs and another 1 000 jobs in the raw material production, supply and logistics value chain. The plant uses 100 per cent locally sourced minerals of lime and coke, which are reacted using 100 per cent locally generated electricity in the most advanced and largest electric arc furnace to produce calcium carbide in the southern hemisphere.

Half of the production of calcium carbide is exported, with the majority market share in Africa, the Middle East and Australia. The Americas, Europe and Asia are also export markets.

“The IDC’s role – as it has been for more than 70 years – is to assist the development of South African industries, such as SACC, that add value and provide jobs to our economy,” said Qhena.