January 20, 2010

Eskom Celebrates Three Years Operation of its εUCG™ project in Majuba, South Africa

The first UCG plant in South Africa, ignited at Majuba, Mpumalanga Province, on 20 January 2007 celebrates three years of continuous operation and gas production. The Majuba UCG project is based on Ergo Exergy’s proprietary εUCG™ technology and is developed by Eskom Holdings Ltd. Making this the longest running UCG operation in the Western World, the Majuba Project out-performs the Chinchilla trial from 1999-2002, which also utilised Ergo Exergy’s proprietary εUCG™ technology. This great achievement shows why Ergo Exergy Technologies is the un-denied world leader of UCG, conducting the only two UCG operations of this size and temporal scale in the world in the last 20 years. Based on the results of the last three years of work, expansion of the Majuba εUCG™ gas production facility for commercial electricity generation is already underway. Initially the high quality syngas will be used for co-firing at the 4.2 GW Majuba Power Station, supplementing the use of coal, however development plans for a purpose built Combine Cycle Gas Turbine (CCGT) plant have already been initiated.