Making Acid in the Heart of Africa
Roopinder Tara posted on January 08, 2020 |
There’s not much good news coming out of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a country in the heart of Africa that seems engulfed by civil war, conflict and other violence. Until we are invited to a showcase of international infrastructure projects in Singapore (Bentley’s Year in Infrastructure 2019, YII2019) and find out about a significant project in the remote province of Katanga, an area as well known for its rich reserves of copper and cobalt as the violence surrounding them. When the plant is at full capacity, the mines should be awash in sulfuric acid.
The $245 million project had its design and construction managed by Hatch Ltd., a global construction firm headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario. The finished plant will be capable of making all the sulfuric acid the copper mines need to leach copper oxide minerals. The export of copper accounts for 50 percent of all of DRC’s exports. The plant will have 77 km of piping and has been designed largely with Bentley’s software, which the company credits for taking months off the construction process. In all, Hatch was able to go from feasibility studies to finished plant in under two years.
The project includes a 1,400-ton-per-day manufacturing facility and a 20 MW electrical waste heat power generation system with a thermal cooling tower. Before the plant was built, sulfuric acid had to be trucked to the…