Modern Mining October 2015

COAL MINING

Impumelelo commended for engineering excellence

Night view of Impumelelo, a new 8,5 Mt/a replacement tonnage coal mine complex in the Secunda area.

The Impumelelo shaft project at Sasol Mining’s Brandspruit mine received a commendation at the CESA Aon Engineering Excellence Awards 2015 for the RSV ENCO Hatch Goba Coal Joint Venture. Sasol Mining appointed the Joint Venture as the Engineering, Procurement and Construction Management (EPCM) consultant in August 2009.

T he 62-month, R4,6 billion multi- disciplinary greenfield project in the Secunda area had an integrated management team at its helm. The Joint Venture’s multi-disciplinary team had to interface with the Sasol project team, the Sasol Mining team and the Sasol Coal Supply team, which would ultimately run the entire operation and therefore had to be brought up to speed with the project’s tech- nical scope. “The constructed project demonstrates our commitment to sustainable engineering solu- tions,” comments Kevin Seyfried, Director Mining AEM, Associate at Hatch Goba. “Specialised package managers were respon- sible for the total delivery within their areas of responsibility.” The basic engineering design packages ensured suitability, functionality, constructabil- ity, operability and maintainability of the new mining infrastructure and associated materials handling system. All the systems were designed

to be energy efficient and optimised within strict coal degradation and spillage tolerances. A techno-economic review of the project’s feasibility was completed by the Joint Venture in June 2009, followed by a detailed engineer- ing design phase from July 2009 to December 2010. Construction began in earnest in June 2011. Phase 1 construction was completed in June 2015, with Phase 2 scheduled for completion in June 2019. Upon completion, Impumelelo will have 13 production seams, with a total shaft depth of 235 m. Impumelelo is a new 8,5 Mt/a replacement tonnage coal mine complex for Brandspruit in the Secunda area of Mpumalanga. The project scope entailed the design and development of the complete greenfield mine complex. Therefore special consideration had to be paid to the build-up of the new operation, in con- junction with the phasing out of the existing coal-mining operation. It included the entire shaft system of two vertical shafts, a decline shaft and associated

The 15 000-tonne coal bunker at Impumelelo under construction.

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October 2015  MODERN MINING  35