Our May meeting saw Hennie Pretorius and Mike Sessions of Miteck talking to us on 'Severe service control valves' and it was a refreshing deviation from the usual 'Bus' talks we always seem to have at the Johannesburg meetings. The majority of control valve applications are not difficult to handle and, provided that certain basic rules are followed so that the valve is correctly sized and made of suitable materials, they can be expected to give many years of trouble free service.
There are, however, a small number of applications that (because of high pressures, high pressure drops, high temperatures, abrasive or corrosive fluids, or plant demands for specific needs) necessitate the use of a severe service valve.
It is these applications that prove to be the most interesting from the technical point of view and our presentation focused on specific valves that have been designed and made to solve particular problems, such as a 200 mm pump test valve reducing the pressure of water from 670 bar to 5 bar.
The turnout was once again average but, as usual, the snacks and discussions afterwards were top class. With the onset of winter, it is always pleasant to retreat to the bar area of the Rivonia Country Club after the meeting and continue the informal part of the discussion in front of the fireplace.
Tony Holme of Citect has graciously offered to host two of our meetings this year, with the first one taking place in July. I guess the title will be something like "Basic principles of modern day scada systems".
For the October slot Tony has something really different and exciting for us. They will present a paper titled 'Use of configured software standards in rolling out fast-tracked scada projects'. Essentially it will cover the new engineering concept of developing worldwide standards in application configuration of scada systems, such that the same standards and software modules can be reused on many different projects around the world without having to develop the modules and associated standards from scratch. The paper will appeal to anyone in any way connected to scada projects or in the scada industry.
The October paper will be presented by one of the Citect engineers (and to add some international flavour they will have one of their Australian specialist engineers present it). This paper will be entered for the Negretti award as the nature of the presentation lends itself to this type of adjudication.
As you read this, the June Golf Day would have taken place already, and we would be looking forward to the next Golf Day that is to take place on 29 November 2002 (rain or no rain) at the Leeuwkop Course. If you missed out on the first one, now is the time to make your booking for November.
Parting Shot: We have reason to believe that there are SAIMC Branches in Welkom, Vaal Triangle, Rustenburg and the East Rand. What they are up to is anyone's guess, as they seem to operate in secrecy and divorced from the rest of the SAIMC.
Johan Steyn, Johannesburg Branch, johans@kubler.co.za
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