A system model to repurpose slag into an alternative brick solution for low-cost housing.
Qwabe, Zwakele
Qwabe, Zwakele
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Abstract
The world’s leading producer of platinum group metals is South Africa, and the country accounts for over 80% of the world’s platinum. During the smelting operation, platinum is separated in the furnace: Concentrated matte is extracted on the front end of the furnace and slag is produced at the back end as waste. Platinum smelters produce around 10 525.9 tons of slag annually, which accumulates as a stockpile, never utilised. More storage area is required to store slag for continuous operation of the smelters. The aim of the research was to repurpose the slag into bricks for low-cost housing and, in so doing, to improve the environmental impact from “cradle to grave” to “cradle to cradle”. AnyLogic Discrete Event Modelling was utilised to develop a model that depicts the proposed process flow diagram. The required primary data was collected from different sources and assumptions made where there is no information. The multiple experiments were run on the developed model with different resource loading to create different scenarios. The experiments results data was exported to excel for further analysis and interpretation. The results indicate that 92 human resources are required for a functioning business that can manufacture bricks to build 326 houses per month. The operation is labour-intensive to ensure more job opportunities are created, and a total of 368 personnel are employed permanently on all sites. The smelter can potentially save over R1.5 billion per operation, and R5.6 billion across four sites over a decade, by giving the slag away for free. The environmental pollution is improved as five items of heavy equipment are removed from the operation. The operation has the potential to generate R392.2 million profit in ten years.
Description
Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Masters Of Engineering : Engineering Management in the Department of Industrial Engineering within the Faculty Of Engineering and Built Environment at the Tshwane University of Technology.
Date
2024-08-21
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Tshwane University of Technology
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Keywords
PGMs, Slag, Waste Management, System Modelling, Environmental Impact, AnyLogic