South Africa is on the verge of nice breakthroughs in hydrogen, says newly elected Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (SAIMM) president Isabel Geldenhuys.

Speaking to Engineering News & Mining Weekly in a Zoom interview, Geldenhuys expressed the view that all the big mines with big moving machinery will have the opportunity to move away from diesel and switch to a hydrogen-based fuel system because of the contained ecosystem.

While the use of green hydrogen is always first prize, Geldenhuys pointed out that many processes have grey hydrogen as a by-product and expressed the view that where grey hydrogen is at the ready, it should be used as an imperfect solution rather than being left to go to waste.

She said that South Africa had the required hydrogen know-how as a consequence of the Department of Science and Innovation having supported the hydrogen economy concept for nearly 20 years.

“What really excites me is the focus on being greener and more efficient,” Geldenhuys said.

On the multidisciplinary front, she said: “There are many opportunities for us to work together and bring interesting, transdisciplinary thinking into metallurgy to solve our big problems.”

Under her leadership, the SAIMM plans to strengthen its online presence so that it can communicate optimally with the rest of the mining and metallurgy world at a time of rising mining fortunes.

South Africa’s mining and metallurgy history extends across more than a century, which has resulted in a wealth of knowledge being accessible from SAIMM’s databases.

Geldenhuys, a former manager of Mintek’s pyrometallurgy division, who is now a consultant, expressed excitement at renewable energy’s integration into smelting and the belief that “the stars are aligning” for the smaller mining companies when it comes to smelting.

She also highlighted the opportunity to use furnace off-gases to recover heat, particularly when it comes to bulk commodities.

And where slag is a big by-product, as is the case in the platinum group metals (PGMs) industry – where substantial slag by-product emerges molten at 1 500 ºC to 1 600 ºC – the next envisaged step is to find a way to extract some of that waste heat from the slag.

“My vision for the year is to embed all the hard work we’ve been doing over the last five years in terms of reviving the interest in collaborating at technical conferences and sharing of knowledge.

We have embarked on a process of identifying what it is that makes SAIMM invaluable to our members and we’re starting to communicate that message a lot clearer, and one of my big plans for the year is to work a lot on communicating to our members what we are offering them.

“Sharing of this knowledge is a big passion of mine,” said Geldenhuys.