CRADLE TO THE GRAVE
SA NEEDS DEEP PORT DRAFTS
Port drafts in the South African coastal cities of Durban, Port
Elizabeth and Cape Town are very restrictive and require vast
sums of money in order to handle larger vessels.
Most cargo ships today carry at least 22 000 twenty-foot
equivalent containers, which require deep port drafts. South
Africa needs to invest large sums of money to create suitable
port drafts.
This emerged during a keynote address by Transnet National
Ports Authority (TNPA) at the 2019 Southern African Transport
Conference held at the Council for Scientific and Industrial
Research (CSIR) in Pretoria.
TNPA believes a better solution would come from a single,
deep, ‘green’ offshore port facility. This facility would be able to
accommodate the world's largest vessels and would also act
as a transhipment hub. Green ports have a sustainable future,
and this is why a deep offshore port might be a plausible
development for TNPA.
TNPA says there are generally two philosophies when it comes
to infrastructure investments. Some believe that volume (in
this case, cargo) is required before investments can be made,
while others believe building infrastructure stimulates desired
MITIGATE FIRE RISK
Whether in concentrated solar power (CSP) systems, oil-seed
extraction plants, printing plants and explosives manufacturing
facilities, or other hazardous environments, fire is always a
constant risk.
Fire risk in an industrial environment is often not localised to
a specific area, which means that any potential hazards are
not easy to identify and mitigate as a result, says Michael van
Niekerk, CEO at fire engineering specialist ASP Fire.
Environments where there is a risk of flammable vapour
discharge calls for a different focus, as any kind of ignition must
be prevented from occurring. “Stopping a fire before it starts is
the fundamental approach we adhere to,” says van Niekerk.
If a particular industrial environment poses any danger of
flammable vapour being emitted, then it has to be ventilated
accordingly. In addition, detection equipment that can trigger
emergency ventilation if need be has to be installed.
volumes. Currently, Transnet is required to provide evidence of
cargo volumes before it invests in infrastructure.
In terms of offshore ports, TNPA is trying to change this mindset
and introduce a new way of doing things. It believes that South
Africa needs to shift from derived demand to induced demand.
A new paradigm is also needed that promotes economic
development, while at the same time, ensures climatic and
environmental sustainability. A balance needs to be found
between business needs for growth and the need to protect the
environment.
It says import costs are much higher in Africa than they are in
developed countries. Higher freight costs on the continent stem
from trade imbalances, since Africa is a consumption-led market.
In developed countries, ships are fully loaded both at arrival and
departure, whereas in Africa they frequently leave its shores empty.
This means that Africa is essentially paying double what it
should for shipping. The continent needs to industrialise and
increase exports in order to lower these costs. In a nutshell, the
more industry, the more production and the greater the volume
of goods that it could export.
International trade is also increasingly evolving into complex
interactions between people, firms and organisations. There
is also strengthening interdependence in the logistics chain,
meaning ports no longer exist in isolation.
If this measure by itself is insufficient, special foam-pouring
equipment can also be installed to spray a foam layer over any
large solvent spill, thereby preventing it from evaporating and
forming a flammable vapour.
“An atmosphere containing combustible dust can be more
dangerous than an atmosphere containing flammable vapour,”
van Niekerk points out. When vapour burns, the concentration
of fuel in the air might be 1.7% by volume.
Solid dust particles, on the other hand, contain more energy,
and hence any explosion here is much more violent. That is why
sugar mills and flour mills, for example, generally blow up in the
event of a dust explosion.
Any primary ignition in a hazardous environment can also
result in dust layers on the roof of the building or even on the
windowsills to be suspended and pose a threat for ignition.
Here the potential secondary explosion can be much more
devastating than the initial event. “Hence we deploy ventilation
and dust extraction to mitigate any fallout from the presence of
dust,” van Niekerk elaborates.
Fire risk in an industrial environment is often
not localised to a specific area.
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African Mining October 2019
59