MechChem Africa June 2018

⎪ Products and industry news ⎪

In 2017 the Endress+Hauser Group once again invested more than 7% of sales in research and development. “With 261 patent filings, as well as 467 approved patents, we are innovating at a high level again this year,” saysAngelikaAndres, head of the patent law department at Endress+Hauser. The company owns a to- tal of 7 479 active property rights around theworld, withmany of the developments stemming from liquid analysis, level and flowmeasurement technologies. “Inorder to strengthen theGroup’s po- Innovation spirit remains high

tion with select universities and research institutes is another factor that helps the Endress+Hauser Group maintain high levels of innovation. Endress+Hauser, a provider of mea- surement and automation technology, has traditionally placed a high value on re- search and development. Employees who make significant contributions to a patent filing are invited to an annual Innovators’ Meeting. Patents with particularly high business impact are recognised with spe- cial awards. This year’s event was held in mid-April in Denzlingen near Freiburg, Germany. www.za.endress.com

sition in this competitive environment, we protectourinnovationswithpatentsinthe very early stages,” says Dr Andreas Mayr, corporatedirectormarketingand technol- ogy at Endress+Hauser. 2017 saw several new innovations, as Endress+Hauser in- troduced 57 new products to the market, including the self-calibrating iTHERM TrustSens thermometer and the Promass Q, whichdelivers highly precisemass flow, volume flow and density measurements. Apart fromthe extensive research and development activities, close coopera-

Endress+Hauser innovators were honoured this year during the Innovators’ Meeting held in Denzlingen near Freiburg, Germany.

Safety philosophy gives plant customers a lift of four Babcock employees and six rigging specialists. “The first installation for Air Productswent sowell that they requested we manage the entire project for the sec- ond tank, including transporting the tank from Germiston to Newcastle, cranage and rigging,” explains Hawkins.

the locomotive was undertaken utilising a Liebherr LTM1400 and LTM1500 in tandem to place the locomotive back on the tracks. “Babcock provided the cranage and rigging and the successful outcome has sinceresultedinBabcockreceivingfurther orders for locomotive recoveries from Transnet,” says Hawkins. www.babcock.co.za

Babcock’s ‘safety first’ philosophy has resulted in its plant hire business receiv- ing two orders from Air Products South Africa to install two 88-t cryogenic tanks at its plant in Newcastle, KwaZulu-Natal. Followingthefirstsuccessful,incident-free heavy lift in2017, Air Products contracted Babcock to undertake the transport, cranage and rigging to install a second cryogenic tank at the same plant this year. The cryogenic tanks areused to storeCO 2 . The second installation will be under- taken by the Liebherr LTM1500 500-t mobile crane and multi-axle trailer, which was also used for the first lift. Despite it being an extremely large crane used for heavy lifts, the Liebherr LTM1500 is quick and easy to erect. Michael Hawkins, heavy lift manager at Babcock, says that the first tank was installed within four hours, using a team

Hawkins reports that, in addition to providing incident-free heavy lifting services toAir Products, Babcock has suc- cessfully completed various other heavy lifts in the last few months. The company places emphasis on safetyand trainingand pridesitselfonitssafetyrecord,whichcur- rently stands at 20 years without a single product failure or injury. In addition, in February 2018, Babcock received an order from Transnet to up- right a 180-t electric locomotive that had derailed in Katu. As the line could only be isolated for three hours, the recovery of

A Liebherr LTM1400 and an LTM1500 were used in tandem to place the locomotive back onto the tracks.

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