Wet end chemistry in South Africa is at world-competitive levels, thanks to Stanger-based manufacturer of ionic demand titrators, Lechintech.
With 85% of the local market share, it can be said that paper producers have come to rely on Lechintech's in-house developed solution for the provision of a stable wet end. Incorporating South African developed supervisory control and data acquisition (scada) system Adroit, the IDT 2000 monitors and controls chemical variables in paper production and water treatment plants.
"The primary function of our product is to enhance the use of ingredients by optimising their distribution and retention throughout the system," Managing Member Bradley Peacock explains. Lechintech replaced the traditional method of manually taking batch samples - from which charge and catonic demand levels could be established - with an on-line titration system that extends into a chemical management program. "Using Adroit as the core of our software, we developed a system incorporating monitoring, analytical, tracking and data logging capabilities," explains Peacock. "This development was only possible due to the fact that Adroit is a South African product and therefore strongly supported here, as any software development process requires intensive technical support."
Taking additional analog, digital and mixed inputs like pH, conductivity, temperature, flow, tank levels, pump values, consistency and sequencing recipes, the IDT 2000 is capable of fully controlling chemical additives in the wet end process.
Therefore, by optimising chemical dosage and improving on paper quality through fibre retention, production disruptions due to paper breaks can be significantly reduced, saving producers significant amounts of money and production time.
On average, up to an hour of downtime can result from every instance of stoppage - making downtime a costly problem.
Having just upgraded a Mondi Merebank titrator to the Adroit driven IDT 2000, Lechintech is also approaching commissioning on a similar system for Mondi Richards Bay. "At one stage we were exporting more machines through our international partner Buckman Laboratories than we were selling locally, but South African demand has picked up and we are now exporting only 50% of production," says Peacock. "With so many machines in the field, we have an agreement with Eastcoast Solution for the secondary maintenance of our systems."
The relationship between Lechintech and Eastcoast is further strengthened by the 50% ownership each holds in Process Plus I/O modules. These cost-effective, robust industrial front-end devices were jointly developed by the two companies for applications where programmable logic controllers are not justified - such as the IDT 2000. Supporting Omron and Modbus protocols, up to eight Process Plus cards goes into an IDT 2000 system, in some cases more.
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