All in a Week’s Work

Our Secunda branch recently received the Shutdown Order from Samancor Chrome (Middelburg Ferrochrome). The project will encompass refurbishment and servicing of 3 cooling towers which are used in the chrome direction reduction processing plant.

The team are required to complete the project within one week, quite a challenge for most, but for IWC this is the norm. Our experienced team are used to working in small teams on high pressure projects.

Due to Covid-19 travel restrictions, the team are limited to 1 Supervisor and 4 general workers. The vehicle used to transport the team to and from Middleburg each day, is limited to 5 people including the driver. This impacts the project by increasing the hours per person in one day. Speed and accuracy is the order of the day… time for a bar one.

The scope of work includes refurbishment and servicing of one old cooling tower and two new cooling towers, each tower has 1 cell. The new cooling towers were installed in 2017 and they make use of baskets which contain the fill. These baskets are only accessible by removing the top section of the tower.

Old Tower

Replacement of fill, drift eliminators and nozzles. High pressure cleaning of the towers inside and out. Structural inspections.

New two cell towers

Replacement of drift eliminators and nozzles. Removal of all the roof bolts to enable the removal of the cooling tower top section and then re-installation of the bolts. High pressure cleaning of the spare cartridges. High pressure cleaning of the towers inside and out. Structural inspections.