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Fossil Fuel Foundation establishing professional development centre

5th February 2016

By: Mia Breytenbach

Creamer Media Deputy Editor: Features

  

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The Fossil Fuel Foundation (FFF) has embarked on the development of a formal educational and training section, the Professional Development Centre, which seeks to provide for the needs of new entrants to the coal, carbon and related industries, as well as update existing industry players on technical information.

The centre was sanctioned by the foundation at its final meeting of 2015.

“In this fast-moving world of change, it is vital that industry players are kept up to date with technical information from specialists that are well versed in each discipline,” says XMP Consulting coal analyst and centre director Xavier Prévost.

Courses at the centre have been presented on an ad hoc basis since 1994, with up to seven five-day courses presented a year.

“However, with the imminent promulgation of carbon tax (due for implementation this year), there is greater pressure to operate coal- or fossil fuel-based operations more efficiently and cleanly,” says Prévost.

He explains that, amid additional impending challenges, such as using increasingly poorer grades of coal and the scarcity of water, it was decided that a more formal structure should be set up to meet the increasing information requirements and difficulties encountered by those in the coal and hydrocarbon industries.

The centre now offers interdisciplinary courses, covering all disciplines across the coal and hydrocarbons value chains, which will be hosted over one, two or three days.

These disciplines include resources and reserves of coal and related hydrocarbons, as well as their origins, formation, characterisation and use for heat and power generation. Other disciplines will focus on coal mining; beneficiation; trade and marketing; coke and other carbon reductants for metallurgical pur-poses; coal-to-liquids; gas; other advanced prod-ucts; and the impact of these aspects on the environment.

In addition, courses outlining policies or issues of national concern, such as fires and self-heating in coal mines, as well as junior coal mining developments, will be presented.

Professional development points will be allocated to those attending the courses, and certificates will be offered for those attending the longer courses.

Prévost believes that the centre’s approach to encouraging the production and use of all fossil fuel commodities in the cleanest and most efficient possible manner is significant: “This is achieved, for example, by teaching an understanding of the fuels to be used and the use of advanced technologies, both of which would lead to reduced atmospheric emissions and improved land-based environmental impacts, such as acid mine drainage.”

The Professional Development Centre also aims to address some unique features of South Africa’s coal and hydrocarbon resources, which have led to the need for new dry technologies for beneficiation and power-generation purposes.

“For example, with the organic materials in South African coals now understood to burn at temperatures well above those caused by coals in countries in the northern hemisphere, leading to increased slagging and heat damage to boiler equipment . . . different high-temperature materials, adaptations in designs in boiler equipment and careful, appropriate operating procedures are required,” Prévost explains.

With such factors believed to be relatively unknown in countries supplying South Africa with mining, beneficiation and boiler plant equipment, it is important that South Africa develops its own technologies and, certainly, a more technically aware community, he highlights.

While the education of science and engineering undergraduates is rigorous and, in the engineer-ing field, largely dedicated to training in engineering principles, plants and processes, with modelling and design as key issues, there is little, if any, time for education in specific commodities, such as gold, coal or hydrocarbons, Prévost adds.

“This means that scientists or engineers emerge with excellent backgrounds in technology, but with little or no understanding of what coal is, how it performs in those technologies, how to fix or diagnose problems . . . or how to improve the processes to meet higher efficiencies.”

He states that these skills can be acquired only through many years of trial and error, undertaking postgraduate research and/or attending specialised courses once in the working environment.

“The need for specialised information is greater now than it has ever been in the past,” Prévost concludes.

Edited by Martin Zhuwakinyu
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

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