Electricity + Control December 2015

CONTROL SYSTEMS, AUTOMATION + SYSTEMS ENGINEERING

ROUND UP

Stellenbosch wins PneuDrive Challenge 2015

The successful PneuDrive Challenge 2015 , a mechatronics design competition for engineering students throughout South Africa has seen Stellenbosch University once again walk away with top honours. The theme of this year’s competition was to design a game changer for the food and beverage industry.The judging panel announced the TopThreeTeams for the 2015 Competition on Friday 6 November 2015.

to factories. At a local chip factory in Gauteng, this waste is presently underutilised. This project proposes that a system using Anaerobic Digestion (AD) be employed to dispose of the solid waste and clean the waste water while producing a useful by-product in the form of biogas. This biogas can be used to supplement any existing system in the heating of the chip cookers, reducing energy costs. Competing students: Micha Dedekind, Craig Daniel and Richard Grieves under guidance from Professor Joao Nobre. Third place (and Innovation prize): WITS University – AutomatedWarehouse Cleaner This team from WITS identified a health and safety risk of broken bottles and spillage on the Rosslyn brewery factory floor. During the conveyor packing process, filled bottles of beer are often broken due to the high pressure applied during the filling process. They proposed an autonomous cleaning machine as their solution to this obviously unacceptable problem. Competing students: Vuledzani Madala, Portia Sibambo, Nkosinathi Shongwe,Tisetso Ramolobe under guidance of Professor Joao Nobre. Formal prize giving for this competition takes place in January 2016. The new theme for 2016 will be announced by end November 2015. Enquiries: Lindy Ndaba. (SEW-EURODRIVE).Tel. 011 248 7000 or email lndaba@sew.co.za or Riaan van Eck (SMC Pneumatics).Tel. 011 568 2407 or email jbester@smcpneumatics.co.za

First place: Stellenbosch University

The Mechabrewers team came out tops with their design. The Stellenbosch University team visited local micro beer brewer, Stel- lenbrau, and analysed a specific problem – the need for an efficient, inexpensive and automated application for transporting empty beer bottles on to the capping machine. The solution proposed by the team aims to improve and add value to the company by allowing better utilisation of labour, and improvements in time and efficiency, by automating the process of transporting empty beer bottles onto a capping machine, BottleBot, which has a low energy consumption and can be controlled by a smart phone or tablet device. The BottleBot can increase efficiency and accuracy through complete automation and elimination of human error and contamination.

Second place: WITS University –The Potato Game Changer

This team addressed the problem of transforming waste into useable energy in a potato chip factory. Potato chip making factories produce significant quantities of starch laden waste water and solid vegetable wastes such as potato peels. The starch waste water can be very harmful to the environment and potato peel waste is of zero value

The judging panel: John Menasce (Hatch), Brian Abbott (SMC Pneumatics, SA, Johan van Graan (SEW-EURODRIVE), Riaan van Eck (SMC Pneu- matics SA), Dr. Mark Gordon (ESKOM), Eugene Tondolo (South African Fluid Power Association), Conrad Pilger (SEW-EURODRIVE), Tobias Nittel, (SEW-EURODRIVE, Germany, Greg Perry (SEW- EURODRIVE SA).

The Stellenbosch team: Reghardt Pretorius, Johannes Leuvennink, Madeli du Toit, Josua Blom and Jean Swart.

Electricity+Control December ‘15

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