Every Friday morning, SAfm’s AMLive’s radio anchor Bongi Gwala speaks to Martin Creamer, publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly.  Reported here is this Friday’s At the Coalface transcript:

Gwala: You heard market watcher Clive Ramathibela-Smith talking about Africa’s $30-billion rail renaissance now starting. We spoke about South Africa’s capacity to supply rolling stock for railways last week. South Africa have again demonstrated its capacity to build railway rolling stock for Africa.

Creamer: We did and it has happened again this week. Just down the road in Germiston, South Africa handed over another 45 rail wagons, this time to Swaziland. It is a Southern Africa story. Tthe previous two weeks saw Transnet Engineering handing over coaches to Botswana. A lot more to come from Transnet Engineering and a lot more to come out of the Germiston depot. We are at the point of supplying Southern Africa to start with, with rolling stock. We are very good with that.

Transnet Engineering has been doing this for sometime. They are turning over R11-billion a year at the moment and I think that the horizon out there points to billions of rands more, that can be earned by South Africa in the Southern African region. We see the bolstering up of the rail, we see that we are good at the rolling stock production, we see that the State through Transnet Engineering involved also with General Electric of the US, using our facilities here and finding them fantastic to build locomotives.

We also see the private sector moving in with Gibela out of Dunnottar wanting to create a huge school for training up skills and looking north to Africa to supply rail and also creating a rail hub in Dunnottar for the production of rolling stock.

Gwala: Japan and South Africa are working on a solar plant that will produce hydrogen in this country for fuel cells.

Creamer: Yes, this is fantastic news as well. We know that the Japanese are passionate about fuel cells and the hydrogen economy. We know South Africans are also becoming passionate about the same topic. Japan says they will be a hydrogen economy and get all their no-carbon energy from hydrogen by 2040.

Our Science and Technology Minister, Naledi Pandor, is saying that we need a hydrogen and fuel cell roadmap now as well. We need our own roadmap to see where we are going with this and that is being drawn up with multi-department activity. Listen to this now, Japan and South Africa working on a high-temperature solar plant, taking solar power to produce the hydrogen that you need for the fuel cells. Now, Mother Nature has been doing this for a long time, but scientists have found it very uneconomic for sometime. There has now been a breakthrough in nanotechnology where you don’t need absolutely clean water anymore, you can have grey water that you can use and still get that split between hydrogen and oxygen.

You can use the power from the sun to help you do this. A marvelous project that could advance our fuel cells. Because why do we want fuel cells? We want them because they use platinum, which we have in abundance in the ground, and if that platinum demand keeps surging we could supply some of the solutions to the world on driving your cars and golf carts or doing your airconditioning. Having all sorts of cellphones powered by fuel cells and even having these rolling stock rail wagons or trains powered by fuel cells. It is a new age and I think that the Japanese have looked at this and they find it great.

They want to move away from their nuclear past, they have had problems with that. They prefer hydrogen because it is the most abundant supplier of energy on earth and it is the cleanest and the world wants clean energy. That is what the fuel cell provides. The fuel cell provides that cleanliness and quietness and low maintenance.

Gwala: Government is intent on creating incentives for mines to benefit from investment in fuel cells.

 Creamer: Why don’t platinum mines power themselves on platinum fuel cells? They can be prepared to do the hard yards in the beginning. The government is saying perhaps they need a little bit of an incentive.

Again Science and Technology Minister Naledi Pandor, out at Springs last week, let the cat out of the bag that there are some incentives on the way. You have got Treasury that already has a set of research and development incentives. You have got the Mining Charter that says you need to add a bit of value to the product you are producing. Put that together and you can then incentivise the use of fuel cells in South Africa’s mines. You don’t want diesel fumes underground, you want something that is zero emission. So you can get your equipment going on that.

We saw out in Springs where Naledi Pandor was watching there, we saw that these forklifts that are powered on the fuel cells were not only dead quite but there were no emissions. Don't need any respirators or anything to protect you. There is tremendous advantage to be seen in fuel cells, but we have got to watch out for the electric car, because we want the FCEV, the fuel cell electric vehicle. We don’t just want the EV, the electric vehicle, but the EV is starting to win the race. We see that it is being led by a South African, a former Pretoria Boys’ High School pupil now in the United States, Elon Musk, who is actually leading the Tesla charge against us. We need to develop the FCEV through platinum, we want to push platinum. At the moment, his route is pushing lithium and graphite. We want the platinum route. Perhaps we can do some persuasion on Elon Musk of Tesla to actually move to our line of thinking and get the fuel cell in power position.

But, the distribution of hydrogen is key and that is why we see the Japanese and South Africans working on a solar plant to try to get this hydrogen. Imagine if we can get the solar power to help us to get the hydrogen. We pull up a fuel station and we just have hydrogen to put into our car. The Germans have now converted the gas spread of hydrogen into an oil look-a-like distribution possibility. So you can spread this hydrogen as a liquid so therefore it takes a lot of the risk out of it, because we don't want a Hindenburg. We remember flashbacks where people were scared of hydrogen because it can explode like crazy.

If you are using it in an oil-like way, which the Germans have now developed in liaison with our Anglo American Platinum, this could be the answer to a maiden’s prayer. A lot of steps being taking to make sure a lot that we get fuel cells into position. They call it the hydrogen age, but you don't have to use hydrogen directly, you can use other gases as well, something that gives you the hydrogen. I remember Pieter Cox, the former CEO of Sasol, used to say what is all the fuss about? Sasol produces sulpher-free petrol from coal. Just pull up at our Sasol petrol stations. If you have got a fuel cell vehicle with an on-board reformer and it can reform Sasol’s fuel-from-coal into hydrogen and Bob’s your uncle. You don’t need to change anything. We are already there.

Gwala: Thanks very much. Martin Creamer is publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly.