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CTS was awarded the tender in July 2011 for Katima Mulilo’s Hospital laundry. The scope of the work included the supply, manufacture and assembly, delivery to site, installation, testing, commissioning and maintenance of laundry equipment.

Safety is born of experience. In the field of clinical practice, medical know-how and professional laundry care ensure optimum treatment and care of patients. For this, systematic cleaning, disinfection, drying and sterilization of linen and operating garments are prerequisites for avoiding risk to both patients and staff.

Katima Mulilo’s Hospital has to process over 1 ton of laundry per day. Our high speed washer extractors have a spin factor of 830rpm, greatly reducing tumbling time. With built in soap dispensers, the correct amount of soap is used each time, and the perforated lifting ribs mean more mechanical action and lower water consumption. The high speed washers significantly reduce water and electricity consumption, and still ensure hygienically clean laundry.

Miele offer rotary ironers with roller diameters ranging from 210 to 500 mm. Aluminium heater plates instead of steel guarantee an excellent distribution of heat and considerably reduced heating up times. The foot control ensures that the roller can be easily stopped, eg. for steaming.

A pneumatic lifting device creates a high pressure ironing action for an excellent finish. Katima Mulilo’s Hospital has the largest Miele rotary ironers in Namibia.

After successful completion of the Omusati off grid electrification project, CTS was successful in winning the bid for the second phase of containerized PV solutions for the Kunene region. With the experience gained from phase 1, the containers were optimized in many ways. The final design consisted custom build 20ft container by Namspace in Swakopmund.

Sites that were electrified in the Kunene region are:

• Otjitjekua School
• Otjiu School
• Otjiu Hostel
• Epupa School

The project included the following:

• Upgrading of all government building wiring as per national standard for 4 sites in the Kunene region:
• Manufacture, supply and install container power units for these sites.

The power containers consisted of ca 2.8kW of PV modules installed on the roof as well as 4,500 Ah of battery capacity. Five kVA inverter charger and two 70A BlueSolar Charge regulator all from Victron Energy complete the system. Remote monitoring of all sites is achieved by using the Victron Color Control GX unit.

A 1.5t boiler was installed at the Hartlief factory to cater for the growing needs of steam. The project included:

• Installation of new steam boiler next to the existing boiler
• Modifications to HFO line to cater for new boiler
• Commissioning

Over the past year's minor refurbishment, maintenance and upgrading projects where completed as well such as:

• Installation of condensate pumps to reduce back pressure of equipment inside the factory
• Raising current condensate storage tanks to increase head pressure for feed water pumps
• Three monthly service of both steam boiler and yearly inspection with Ministry of Labor inspectors
  

After close to 20 years of operation, the existing electrically heated hot water boilers were replaced. A modern, energy efficient system supplied by Stiebel Eltron was installed. The system comprises of the following:

2x heat pumps
5x 1000L hot water tanks (with electrical backup)
1x Control panel with remote monitoring and SMS alarm functionality.
2x booster pumps to feed the hotel with water during times when municipal supply is shut off

The installation has been achieved in a 3 week period. All works have been carried out with minimal interruptions to the hot water supply to the hotel. Remote monitoring of the plant in included to assist the client with possible troubleshooting, thus avoiding unnecessary trips to Lüderitz. SMS communication allows the quick reaction times of hotel maintenance personnel to act in cases of municipal water loss.

A modern hot water plant was installed based on heat pump technology. Stiebel Eltron storage tanks as well as heat pumps are supplied that are extremely energy efficient and long life expectancy while at the same time low on maintenance. Further energy savings are achieved as the system is connected to heat recovery units as part of the refrigeration plant.

The challenge of such a system is to guarantee even loading and unloading of the tanks with water to guarantee a uniform temperature distribution in all tanks. This has been achieved by careful piping planing based on the Tichelmann principal.

The system comprises of the following:

• 6x 1000 L buffer tanks
• 2x 23kW heat pump units.
• various pumps and control unit

Central Technical Supplies (Pty) Ltd. – Geiger Engineering (CTS) was approached by Farmers Meat Market Mariental to design, supply and install a solar water heating system with the aim to reduce the monthly diesel consumption as two diesel boilers are operated to heat water up to 82 deg. C for production purposes.

The water requirements of the abattoir are as follows:

1. 2,000 liter/hour @ 45 C°
2. 3,000 liter/hour @ 60 C°
3. 500 liter/hour @ 82 C°

This adds up to a total daily water requirement at 60 deg. C of roughly 25,000 liter.

The system is design such as to preheat water from 18 deg. C to between 50 deg. C and 60 deg. C before supplying the diesel boiler system, thus reducing runtime and diesel consumption of the diesel boilers. A 20,000L stainless steel tank (non pressure tank) manufactured locally according to CTS design, acts as the buffer tank for the daily water requirement. A total of 120 flat plate collectors supplied by Solsquare Namibia with a total surface area of 300 m2 are connected by means of a 450kW Alfa Laval flat plate heat exchanger to the water tank.

A set of two Calpeda circulation pumps connected to Danfoss variable speed drives and a timer circuit guarantees at all times that the heat from the collectors is effectively transported to the water tank. Flow as well as temperature monitoring on all four ports of the heat exchanger make it possible to determine the instantaneous as well as accumulated kWh produced from the collector field.

Furthermore additional heating energy is obtained from the ammonia refrigeration plant. A heat exchanger is installed on the ammonia discharge side before the existing cooling towers to be able to heat the water during night time as well, as this is the time when the refrigeration plant runs at full capacity to cool down the newly slaughtered meat in the cold rooms. Again flow control and temperature monitoring on the hot water side of the heat exchanger accurately indicate heating energy obtained from the refrigeration plant.
A total of four pump sets have been installed and pumps are cycled on a 24 hour basis in automatic mode. Should at any given time a pump fail, the system can be switched to manual mode to be able to repair the pump without system down time and a resulting increase in diesel consumption.

All systems components are sized such as to allow for future heating capacity upgrades should it be required.

After a year of operation, the plant is performing better than expected and the client is able to safe nearly N$ 60,000 per month on diesel costs, bringing the payback period of the entire system down to below two years. This clearly shows that solar energy, be it for heating or for electricity production, surely is the way forward for a cleaner and greener future for generations to come. CTS is proud to be part of making Namibia and the world a better place for our grandchildren to live in.