The latest branch Technology Evening was held at the Centurion Country Club on 6 April. Ai2SA kindly sponsored the evening and managing director Petrus Klopper gave an interesting presentation on ‘Resource Efficiency: cleaner production and control & instrumentation (RECP principles) and how it applies to the C&I domain’. With energy efficiency for obvious reasons being a prime focus area in industry, and RECP principles key to lowering costs, Petrus took the audience through the steps end users, system integrators, vendors and project houses would need to follow to achieve the resulting cost benefits:
Chairman Jurie Weidemann (right) thanks Petrus Klopper for presenting at the April technology meeting.
• Modifying inputs (eg energy/raw material etc) i.e. – use substitutes.
• Look at improving housekeeping – i.e. operations layout/safety etc.
• Consider reuse/recycling internally.
• Modify output or what we are producing i.e. larger batches etc.
• Consider the Industrial Symbiosis Program, which is where other companies use waste as raw material.
• Implement changes e.g. new processes, value-add concepts/equipment such as condition based monitoring.
Petrus also explained that this approach should be adopted throughout the design stages of a project in order to keep costs down (essential in a strained economic situation), and hopefully freeing up more capital to spend on value-add technologies to strengthen the whole production process. Petrus had many examples to illustrate his theory and reinforce the principles of RECP.
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