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Kusile Power Station Geosynthetics Review

Service News Monday, July 8, 2013: Gast International SA (Pty) Ltd

Kusile, meaning “the dawn has come”, is a coal-fired power station close to the existing Kendal Power Station in the Nkangala District of the Mpumalanga province. The Kusile site is about 1355 hectares in size located on the Hartbeesfontein and Klipfontein farms. It is the most advanced coal-fired power plant project in Eskom to date. In general, a coal-fired power station will take about 10 years to build, but due to current energy capacity constraints, this project has been fast-tracked and is estimated to be completed in about eight years.

The power station will consist of six units, each rated at approximately 800MW installed capacity, giving a total of 4800 MW. As such it will be one of the largest coal-fired power stations in the world, once finished. The first unit is planned for commercial operation in 2014, with the next units following at 8 month intervals, with the last unit expected to be in commercial operation by 2018. To date the project is still on schedule to meet the target dates.

Technology

Kusile will be the first power station in South Africa to have Flue Gas Desulphurization (FGD) installed. FGD is the current state-of-the-art technology used to remove oxides of sulphur from the exhaust flue gases in power plants that burn coal or gas. This technology is fitted as an atmospheric emission abatement technology, in line with current international practices to ensure compliance with air quality standards, especially since the power station is located in a priority airshed. The FGD plant is a totally-integrated chemical plant using limestone as feedstock and producing gypsum as a by-product. The Cosira Group and Alstom consortium were contracted to provide the FGD technology for all six boilers of the plant.

Contractors

About 17 million tons of coal required for Kusile will be supplied by Anglo Coal’s subsidiary, Anglo Inyosi Coal. The combination of the resources is expected to yield no less than 800 million sales tons over a period of not less than 47 years.

Eskom awarded a R31 billion contract to acquire the boilers and turbines for the plant to Hitachi Power Africa and Alstom respectively. Another contract that involved the supply of generation transformers was awarded to Siemens.

A joint venture with Group Five, Stefanutti Stocks and WBHO, has been awarded the Kusile Power Station Civil Works by Eskom, a R2.9 billion contract. The joint venture received access to the site on 8 December 2008 to conduct planning, piping testing and soil investigation. Full access was granted in January 2009. The plant’s concrete construction work mainly includes the construction of power station buildings and administrative buildings, including control, medical and security buildings. Also included is the construction of high voltage yards and roads. The infrastructure facilities being constructed to aid in operations of the power plant includes:

Water supply pipelines Fuel and water storage facilities Limestone off-loading facilities An ash disposal facility A coal and ash conveyor system. GAST

GAST has been appointed by WBHO to assist with the supply and installation of Geomembranes and Geotextiles to multiple Ash dumps and dirty dams. The HPDE lining working area stretches over 2 200 000m² and the Geotextiles over 3 500 000m². This work has been valued at R180 million.

The system will consist of 6 layers and with the material requirements including:

4 995m² of A4 Geotextiles 110 000m² of A10 Geotextiles 3 500m² of A6 Geotextiles 3 301 220m² of A8 Geotextiles 1 000 080m² of Geosynthetics Clay Liner 380 000m² of 50mm high Geocell with perforated walls 2 163 300m² of 2.0mm dual textured HDPE Geomembrane 84 640m² of 1.5mm mono textured HDPE Geomembrane 84 640m² of 1.5mm smooth HDPE Geomembrane Gast commenced work on the project on 25 November 2012 and is set to complete in 2015