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BBE is and has been involved in the following types of projects:
- Refrigeration plants (surface and underground)
- Bulk air coolers (surface and underground)
- Heat rejection facilities
- Chilled water reticulation systems and secondary air coolers
- Ice thermal storage systems
- Energy recovery installations
- Main fan stations
This has led to numerous engineering innovations some of which are:
- BBE has developed high-efficiency, horizontal surface bulk air coolers
that incur lower capital and operating costs than conventional air cooling towers.
Many of these new coolers are already operating on mines in South Africa and elsewhere.
- BBE designed innovative air coolers based on a patented glycol and ice thermal storage system
that damps-out diurnal load changes and allows power shift management.
This special refrigeration system design is able to produce ultra-cold air that is able to extend
the depth of mining before introducing underground air cooling.
- BBE has implemented controlled recirculation schemes to achieve increased production without the cost
of additional shaft infrastructure. In some cases these schemes have also increased the accessible
limit of ore reserves.
- BBE successfully designed and implemented a novel ventilation and air cooling design for a 16 km
TBM tunnel. The BBE design allowed the ventilation of the full drive from the portal and avoided the
high cost of multiple ventilation shafts originally envisaged by the client.
- BBE is proud to have developed and applied all over the world computer simulation software to
predict heat flow within mines, allowing fully optimised air cooling strategies to be rapidly identified,
amongst many other issues.
- BBE has developed transient, dynamic modelling techniques
for underground heat flow which led to the design of smaller refrigeration and air cooling systems while
still achieving the required underground environmental conditions.
- BBE design optimisation process includes various design strategies and tactics in order to
achieve the most practical and cost effective solution. In most cases this process is highly iterative
as illustrated in the attached figure.
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