Cooling solutions company Industrial Water Coolers’ (IWC’s) slurry and solution cooling towers are designed with ease of maintenance in mind and are specifically designed and developed to handle slurries and zinc solutions, as well as highly abrasive and corrosive solutions. Their ease of maintenance makes them a viable option for remote locations across Africa.
The cooling towers comprise forced draught fans and removable spray lances which are accessible from an external walkway. They have no fill, making them ideally suited for applications where fouling of the internals would normally be a major operational concern.
Drift eliminators are assembled into easily removable pads and can be provided with an automatic cleaning in place system. Drift losses have been minimised and can be reduced to as low as 0.0002% of the recirculating solution flow rate.
The draught cooling tower is typically octagonal in shape and consists of several field-assembled, dual composite glass fibre reinforced panels, complete with an integral basin made of rubber-lined stainless steel, which is designed to be nonclogging.
Solution temperatures of up to 80° can be accommodated.
The structural panels have integral polypropylene liners with the structural laminate produced from a high quality vinyl ester resin. A conductive carbon tissue is included as a corrosion barrier, as well as to allow for spark testing of the internal polypropylene panel seal welds.
One of the most significant challenges in the African mining sector is ensuring safe environments for miners. Gold and platinum mines can descend as far as 4 km below surface, where virgin rock temperatures often exceed 60 °C. To reduce the temperature to a safe level for miners to work in, a sophisticated cooling solution is required.
IWC has been developing bulk air cooling systems in the mining industry for over 30 years. Recent projects in Africa involved the manufacturing and installing of these systems into platinum miner Anglo American Platinum’s Amandelbult platinum mine, in Limpopo, and gold miner AngloGold Ashanti’s Mponeng mine, in Gauteng.
Underground mining operations make use of some of the largest ventilation and cooling systems globally, incorporating various types of cooling technology such as evaporative condensers, refrigeration plants, precooling and condenser cooling towers and bulk air coolers.
IWC has provided a number of large, field-erected condenser cooling towers as well as both surface and underground bulk air coolers across Africa.