Swedish Stirling ships PWR BLOK to TC Smelter
Swedish Stirling AB is shipping the company's second PWR BLOK 400-F today. The unit is being delivered to TC Smelter’s facility in South Africa. Installation and commissioning will take place during Q2.
Swedish clean tech company Swedish Stirling is shipping the company's second finished PWR BLOK 400-F today. The recipient is the South African company, TC Smelter, a subsidiary of Samancor, one of South Africa's leading ferrochrome producers.
The background to the shipment is an agreement regarding a pilot facility for energy conversion using the PWR BLOK inked by Swedish Stirling and TC Smelter just over two months ago. Installation and commissioning will take place during 2Q 2020. Preparations for the installation will begin next week. The necessary infrastructure, such as electricity, water and gas lines for residual gas, is already in place in the vicinity. The PWR BLOK 2 is an upgraded version compared to the initial unit delivered to Afarak Mogale in 2019. Among other things, the unit has a new control system that will make it far easier to integrate new features and to optimise operation in the future.
“It's a great feeling to be able to ship our second commercial unit to TC Smelter. Today, just over two years post-launch, three customers who together account for just over 95 percent of ferrochrome production in South Africa have signed agreements for both pilot and full-scale facilities. Our next goal, of course, is to negotiate an agreement for a full-scale facility at TC Smelter,” says Gunnar Larsson, CEO of Swedish Stirling.
TC Smelter already has a 17 MW facility for recovering energy from residual gases supplied by another vendor. The technology in this facility is based on internal combustion engines – unlike Swedish Stirling's stirling technology, which is based on external combustion. The existing facility quickly proved unable to handle the varying quality of the residual gases, for which reason it has not been in use in recent years. It is for this reason that TC Smelter has now chosen to pilot the PWR BLOK. A full-scale 17 MW facility at TC Smelter corresponds to approximately 40 PWR BLOK units.
TC Smelter is one of Samancor's five major ferrochrome smelters in South Africa. Samancor's total electricity costs for all ferrochrome production in the country run to a huge SEK 1 billion per month. A complete PWR BLOK rollout at all facilities will make it possible to shave off 15% of these costs.
For further information please contact:
Sven Ljungberg, CCO, Swedish Stirling AB, +46 (0)31 385 88 30 ir@swedishstirling.com.
About Swedish Stirling
Swedish Stirling AB is a Swedish clean tech company founded in 2008 with a mission to further refine the incomparable ability of Stirling technology to convert thermal energy to electricity. The company’s latest product – the PWR BLOK 400-F – is a unique proprietary solution for recovering energy from industrial residual and flare gases and convert them to 100 % carbon-neutral electricity with high efficiency. The PWR BLOK is – according to independent certification – the cheapest way of producing electricity that exist today and gives greater CO2 savings per invested Euro than any other type of energy source. The company’s shares are listed in Sweden on the NGM Nordic SME. Read more at www.swedishstirling.com