Sasol Limited Sustainability Report 2021 - Book - Page 47
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SUSTAINABILITY PERFORMANCE AGAINST OUR FOCUS AREAS: MINIMISING OUR ENVIRONMENTAL FOOTPRINT (CONTINUED)
Air quality abatement achievement: Progress to date (2015-2021)
2015
2021
Incinerator reduction
• As part of our work to ensure incinerator compliance, we made use of various external studies and collaborated with a number of
parties. We leveraged the expertise of engineering contractors (including Fluor, Wood), incinerator facility owners (CMI, Europem,
John-Zink Hamworthy Combustion, Durr Clean Technologies, Babcock and Wilcox) and European Union operators and experts (EEW,
Bayer,Lanxess, Dr.-ing. Rudi Karpf).
• We pursued numerous 'reduce, re-use and recycle' options, as well as the optimisation of our incinerators before considering
incinerator abatement actions. These options included commercial domestic sludge management for biosludge such as sludge lysis
followed by anaerobic digestion; extended aeration of bioprocess; treat and landfill; phyto-remediation and vemi-composting; capping
of ash heaps; composting for sale and rehabilitation; and re-using high organic waste within the petrol pool.
• As an incinerator abatement option for our biosludge and high organic waste incinerators does not align with Sasol’s ambition to
move up the waste hierarchy, we are exploring alternatives that reduce our environmental footprint for both emissions and waste.
These include cofeeding biosludge to our gasifiers.
• At our Sasolburg Operations, we were able to shutdown three of our incinerators by using alternative waste handling technologies.
These shutdowns have eliminated these points sources and all associated emissions since 2016. We constantly evaluate the future
of our incinerators, considering available sustainable waste-handling technologies.
HIGH FREQUENCY CONTROLLERS
• At our Secunda Operations, the permanent decommissioning in 2017 of the solid sewage incinerator, enabled us to remove this point
source and all associated emissions.
RTO
Air quality offset programme phase one completed for Secunda,
Sasolburg and Natref areas:
Secunda Operations
• In Secunda, phase one of the air quality offsetting programme focused on the reduction of PM and SO2 pollution in
the communities and included specific activities:
• insulation of 5 532 Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) houses and replacing coal stoves with liquified
petroleum gas stoves and heaters;
• an environmental air quality education and awareness programme conducted with 7 700 households and 26 000
learners through door-to-door and primary school campaigns;
• cutting of grass and preparation of fire breaks for veld fire management; and
• informing communities through education and awareness of best practices on separation, sorting and recycling
of waste as opposed to burning with recyclable waste collected and taken to a buy back centre by households.
• Job opportunities were created and SMEs were empowered through the offsetting implementation programme.
Secunda Operations PM
In collaboration with service providers, we identified and installed
for commercial evaluation three electrostatic precipitator controller
technologies on three boilers at Secunda Operations:
Sasolburg and Natref
• In Sasolburg and Natref, the air quality offsetting programme focused on the reduction of PM and SO2 pollution
from non-industrial sources and included specific activities implemented since 2015:
• High-frequency controller;
• Veld, shack and waste fire management which included the donation of a rapid intervention vehicle, a 6 000 litre
support vehicle and grass cutting equipment such as bush cutters and tractors;
• Medium-frequency controller; and
• Waste fire emission reduction including the removal of non-recyclable waste at illegal dump sites, placing skips
at schools, donation of a compactor vehicle and community training;
Once each technology was installed on a boiler, along with our partners
we completed an extensive evaluation based on current PM reduction,
future PM reduction, electrical performance, cost, constructability and
maintainability.
• High-voltage pulse-energisation controllers.
• Vehicle emission reductions through the donation of vehicle emission testing equipment; and
• Education and awareness at 17 schools and 3 000 door-to-door communication campaigns.
• A third-party study quantified the benefits to the ambient air quality and to communities of Sasol and Natref’s offsetting
initiatives. These emission calculations determined the following:
After a 15-month evaluation, we selected high-frequency controllers as
the most promising technology to achieve the required PM reduction.
• About 123 tons of PM10, 115 tons of PM2,5 and 69,5 tons of SO2 were avoided as a result of the offsetting project
over the duration of the implementation (2017 to 2020).
So far we have installed seven high-frequency controllers and the rest
will follow before April 2025.
• Approximately 11 500 tons of waste was removed between 2018 and 2021, avoiding the equivalent emissions
of around 85 tons PM10, 79 tons PM2,5 and 11 tons SO2.
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In addition to the technology installation, our increased focus on
maintenance and operational improvements has also contributed to
the reduction in PM emissions.
Sasol Sustainability Report 2021
PM emissions from Eastern plant
PM concentration in mg/m³ (STP. Dry, @10% O₂)
• This air quality offsetting project was the largest investment project of its time and was ground breaking as it addressed
a very difficult historical problem of solid fuel burning.
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20% reduction realised in Secunda Operations
on the Eastern stack over the last three years