Australasian Mining Review
Issue link: http://ebook.aprs.com.au/i/37922
281 Big mining’s best kept secret… For almost 20 years, PT PAMA, one of the world’s largest mining contractors, has been taking advantage of a breakthrough in fuel technology that has seen it save millions of dollars in maintenance costs on its huge KOMATSU HD 785-5 engines — while increasing fuel effi ciency and signifi cantly reducing unhealthy exhaust emissions and dangerous greenhouse gases. The amazing thing is that they achieved all this without changing engine/fuel specs or hardware, while actually reducing their real fuel-costs. How did they do it? The secret behind this remarkable success story is a product developed from Nobel Prize-winning research into organo-metallic compounds. That product is called XFT (Xtreme Fuel Treatment) and it was developed as a burn-rate modifi er for all petroleum-based fuels (petrol, diesel, fuel-oil – even the highly pollutant, low-grade ‘bunker’ fuels, used in large generators, container-ships and tankers). Essentially, XFT lowers the combustion temperature of the fuel in the combustion chamber, increasing the ‘burn-rate’ per cycle hence utilising the fuel far more thoroughly. With standard (un-treated) fuel, the higher ‘burn’ temperature typically results in ignition delay. The result is that a signifi cant portion of the fuel remains unburned, and is released as exhaust emissions. These emissions affect the environment and particularly individuals working in close proximity to the exhaust fumes. On the other hand, XFT-treated fuel has been proven to burn more completely. This leads to far less emissions (typically one third less, resulting in a healthier work environment — which is of particular interest to OHS professionals), but it also results in greater fuel effi ciency (between 7 - 10% in most applications and even more in static operation situations i.e. generators) — increasing the energy (BTU’s) released from the fuel hence improving horse- power and equipment performance. But fuel effi ciency and health effects are just the beginning. More complete combustion of the fuel results in signifi cantly less carbon and varnish deposits within the engine — which dramatically reduces wear, lowers operating temperatures and signifi cantly increases engine life. This alone would create huge savings in maintenance costs, but the manufacturers of XFT went a number of steps further. As well as the miraculous burn-rate modifi er, they added corrosion inhibitors to protect fuel storage (tanks) and delivery systems and engine components; special detergents to clean and maintain injectors and other fuel system components; a stabiliser to increase the storage-life and potency of fuel; lubricants to protect fuel pumps, injectors, valves, piston rings and bores; a demulsifying agent to separate and gradually remove water from the fuel system preventing engine damage and microbe growth and polymerisation retardants and dispersants to prevent gelling and the formation of solids in fuel — especially in diesel. The result Well, for PT PAMA, over almost two decades, it has meant a saving of Millions. Engineering tests have shown that for cylinder liners from their massive engines with almost 15,000 hours of ‘run-time’ (using XFT), the tolerances were still within ‘new’ specifi cations. This has meant that from an original engine re-manufacturing cycle of 15,000 hours, the company has been able to extend the time before a total reconstruction of the engine was required to 25,000 hours (or 1.4 million kilometres) — a massive 66% improvement. [Innovative Products] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ issue 2.2