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“Violations of federal standards can result in daily and monthly fines that climb into the tens of thousands of dollars. In addition to the fines, traditional monitoring methods that take several days to deliver results increase the risk of significant environmental harm and inflict reputational damages to companies,” Banzen explained.

Water Quality now provides the steel mill instantaneous performance monitoring updates by combining information from the plant’s custom sensors, controller data, field data and laboratory results. The steel mill views these results through an ECOLAB3D digital dashboard that analyzes the data in various ways, giving the plant several ways to visualize its operations and generate actionable insights. This enables the plant to respond with predictive or corrective steps to bring operations under control, such as implementing chemistry changes or making other adjustments.

With Water Quality in place, the steel mill has been able to remain under the daily ammonia outfall limit of 1,000 lbs / 454 kg and the monthly average of 425 lbs / 193 kg discharged for the last 2.5 years. Early in the process, Nalco Water’s chemical and mechanical solutions, such as running the system at a higher pH and incorporating fountains and spargers to help liberate additional ammonia out of the water, helped the plant avoid violations. Over time, the incorporation of ammonia analyzers and automated controls enabled the steel mill to react in real time to control blowdown and chemistry, further increasing the plant’s success.

As environmental, social and corporate governance factors continue to drive influence across all industries, Banzen said Ecolab’s solution helps facilities reduce their water footprint.

“Giving a steel mill the ability to understand how its processes are affecting ammonia discharge levels in real time is a true game changer, especially for long-term sustainability impact.”

https://www.watertechonline.com/wastewater/article/14214659/midwestern-steel-mill-improves-regulatory-compliance-with-a-digital-ecosystem-that-employs-iot-and-realtime-analytics

One of the oldest and largest steel production facilities in the U.S. has implemented an automated solution to monitor ammonia levels in its wastewater, finally enabling the plant to meet limits set by environmental regulatory agencies. Monitoring and mitigating ammonia levels in wastewater is key to the plant’s steel production, with as much as 75,000 gallons / 283,906 liters of water used per ton of steel produced. Until recently, the facility found it challenging to reach acceptable ammonia levels in its discharge water and was failing to meet regulatory standards.

A new strategy at the plant to use cutting-edge digital tools reflects the plant’s efforts to use its water more efficiently and discharge it more responsibly. The plant partnered with Nalco Water, Ecolab’s water management company, to implement Water Quality, a digital service powered by ECOLAB3D, to bring increased visibility, performance and profitability to its water recycling loop. The steel mill’s compliance with environmental regulations hinges on its ability to collect insights into key operational processes and their impacts on water quality within the system.

“We wanted to move this mill from a reactive state to a proactive, automated state, with an end goal of real-time monitoring through Ecolab’s Water Quality, powered by ECOLAB3D,” said Tom Banzen, account manager at Ecolab. “The challenge was capturing critical information that is uniquely relevant to this particular facility, which required building a customized digital solution.”

To give the steel mill real-time monitoring of its wastewater ammonia levels, Nalco Water deployed sensors within the system at both pre- and post-treatment stages to provide data to the ECOLAB3D intelligence platform. This data is then amassed and analyzed in a customized way that is specific to the plant, which provides distinct insights for its unique operations.

“Parameters vary widely from mill to mill, so it’s essential to think outside of the box to tailor our digital solutions for the steel industry,” said Richard LeNeave, a district manager with Ecolab. “It’s exciting to lead the way in accommodating specific industry needs within Water Quality to make it even more valuable to our steel industry partners.”

Real-time results
Water used in steel production facilities circulates in a recycle loop. Over time, it becomes laden with corrosive and scaling elements that ultimately render it unfit for continued cycling, and some of the water (blowdown) is treated and discharged. At the steel mill’s wastewater treatment plant, ammonia and other chemicals in the unusable water are removed through treatment to meet regulatory outfall limits before the water is returned to the receiving waters.

https://m.cnfeol.com/Article/2420946.aspx

On December 1, the signing ceremony of the cooperation agreement between Shandan County, Zhangye City, Gansu Province and Weld Group's all-vanadium liquid flow energy storage and photovoltaic project was held.

Zhao Lixiang, Deputy Secretary of the Zhangye Municipal Party Committee and Acting Mayor of the Municipal Government, Wu Heqian, Member of the Standing Committee of the Municipal Party Committee and Executive Deputy Mayor, and Yang Yulin, Secretary-General of the Municipal Government, jointly witnessed the signing.

The chairman of Weld Group Jiang Shuping and the main responsible comrade of Shandan County Government signed the contract on behalf of both parties.

In recent years, Zhangye City has vigorously cultivated and developed new energy industries based on its significant location advantages and abundant scenery resources. Especially since the beginning of this year, seize major opportunities such as the construction of the Hexi Corridor clean energy base in the province, closely follow the "dual carbon" goal, adhere to the development and growth of the clean energy industry as the main direction, and focus on the cultivation of local enterprises and the introduction of large enterprises at the front end. , The back-end focuses on power delivery and local consumption on the other hand, supporting the introduction of market-oriented competitive allocation methods for wind and solar resources, actively introducing consortia with power generation enterprises as the main body to participate in new energy development, and supporting the construction of upstream and downstream equipment manufacturing projects. Promote the comprehensive, diversified, large-scale, and industrialized development of energy in the city. Welide Group Leshan Shengjia Electric Co., Ltd. is a high-tech enterprise in the field of transmission and distribution equipment manufacturing and electrochemical energy storage in Sichuan Province. It has advanced technology of all-vanadium liquid flow energy storage. Has a number of independent intellectual property rights in management and other aspects. The signing of this contract is Zhangye City's in-depth implementation of the spirit of the Sixth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee of the Party and the full implementation of the vivid practice of the city’s fifth party congress deployment. It is also a goal of striving for a national “zero-carbon city” and promoting high-quality development of economic green transformation. A pragmatic move. The Zhangye Municipal Party Committee and the Municipal Government will actively create a first-class development environment, strive to provide high-quality and convenient services for project construction, coordinate and solve difficulties and problems encountered in the project progress in a timely manner, and strive to achieve fruitful results in strategic cooperation as soon as possible.

https://www.energy-storage.news/226mwh-of-vanadium-flow-batteries-on-the-way-for-california-community-energy-group-ccce/

Four new grid-scale battery energy storage projects have been announced by California energy supplier Central Coast Community Energy (CCCE), including three long-duration flow battery projects.

CCCE, one of the US state’s community choice aggregator (CCA) energy supplier groups, said it has selected the projects in response to a request for proposals (RfP) it issued in June. In total, 21 proposals from 16 developers were submitted and two more energy storage projects are still being considered along with the announced four.

In what could be the biggest utility procurement of the technology so far in the world, vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) systems with eight-hour storage duration will be built ranging in size from 6MW / 18MWh to 16MW / 128MWh, together with a four-hour lithium-ion battery system. CCCE gave an estimated date of 2026 for all of the approved projects to be operational.

The biggest VRFB project in California to date is thought to be the 2MW / 8MWh system inaugurated in 2017 in the service area of utility San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) in a project supported by the state’s government as well as Japan’s state New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organisation (NEDO).
These local energy storage projects will create jobs, support the effectiveness of standalone energy storage, contribute to statewide grid stability, and support California’s transition to clean and renewable energy,” CCCE CEO Tom Habashi said.

“Long-duration energy storage plays an integral role in all of this. Central Coast Community Energy is proud to be innovating with emerging technologies within our service area.”

Community Choice Aggregators give consumers the option of selecting which sources their energy comes from. Many opt for green energy and according to the California Community Choice Association long-term contracts for 2,645.4MW / 9,237.6MWh of energy storage have been signed by CCAs in the state as of earlier this month.

In July, Central Coast Community Energy signed contracts for 778MW of renewable generation and 118.75MW of energy storage in a joint procurement with Silicon Valley Energy, another of the CCAs.

As noted in yesterday’s reporting on Energy-Storage.news about a proposed 400MW / 3,200MWh advanced compressed air energy storage project in California by Hydrostor, the state’s regulatory Public Utilities Commission has moved to procure 1,000MW of long-duration energy storage by 2028.

This is thought to be the first competitive long-duration storage procurement planned in the US. Meanwhile a group of CCAs — not including CCCE — is holding a solicitation for 500MW of long-duration storage. The solicitation, issued in October 2020, is now closed and a decision is pending.

Long article, in short, more V needed

https://m.nbd.com.cn/articles/2021-09-28/1929486.html

The qualified rate of small-sized steel bars without vanadium is only 23%. The industry recommends strengthening the "vanadium content

“Due to factors such as high requirements for the lower limit of vanadium content and lower lower limit of actual standard ratio indicators, there are problems that lead to waste of vanadium resources and uneconomic production." Special researcher of the Counselor Office of Sichuan Provincial People's Government, Senior Consultant of Sichuan Vanadium Titanium Steel Association Zhang Bangxu told reporters. He said: "Reducing high requirements does not mean not adding vanadium, but we have been calling for an increase in the market supply of vanadium-containing high-strength seismic steel bars."

Whether steel bars are strong enough depends on vanadium, which is favored by the capital market this year. According to the research conducted by the Central Iron and Steel Research Institute and the Vanadium Application Technology Promotion Center jointly set up a project team, without adding vanadium and nickel, the pass rate of small-size steel bars is only 23%.

Zhang Bangxu, a special researcher in the Counsel’s Office of the Sichuan Provincial People’s Government and a senior consultant of the Sichuan Vanadium and Titanium Steel Association, said in an interview with the "Daily Economic News" that the high requirements of the previous standards for the lower limit of vanadium have caused many companies that do not meet the conditions to be unable to add vanadium. . The Sichuan Vanadium and Titanium Iron and Steel Industry Association is now also calling for an increase in the market supply of vanadium-containing high-strength seismic steel bars.

If the high requirement for the lower limit of vanadium content is reduced, more steel companies will be encouraged to add vanadium to the production of steel bars. However, the application scenarios of vanadium are becoming more abundant, and it remains to be seen whether the superposition of multiple demand increments will affect the market price.

Rebar need to increase vanadium content
Today (September 28) afternoon, a review and evaluation work meeting on the technical conditions of vanadium-containing hot-rolled ribbed seismic steel bars was held at Sichuan Machinery Research and Design Institute (Group) Co., Ltd. "Daily Economic News" reporter learned from the meeting that the focus of the review and evaluation work meeting is to increase the strength of steel bars...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/24/sun-cables-huge-solar-project-in-northern-territory-a-step-closer-after-support-from-indonesia

A multi-billion dollar plan to supply electricity to Singapore from a giant solar farm in the Northern Territory has cleared a key regulatory hurdle after winning support from the Indonesian government for a subsea cable route through the archipelago.

The Sun Cable project, backed by billionaires Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest and Mike Cannon-Brookes and now expected to cost more than $30bn, also announced it was expanding its proposal by up to 40%, lifting its potential capacity from 14 gigawatts to between 17 and 20 gigawatts.

It said the solar farm, planned for the Newcastle Waters cattle station about 750km south of Darwin, would be backed by between 36 and 42 gigawatt-hours of storage from the world’s largest battery.

The company said in a statement that Indonesia’s coordinating minister for maritime affairs and investment, Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, had confirmed his government had recommended the route of the transmission cables through Indonesian waters and granted a subsea survey permit.

Sun Cable’s chief executive, David Griffin, said Indonesian support was a significant milestone that brought the company closer to generating and transmitting “affordable, dispatchable renewable energy to Darwin and Singapore”.

“We are developing the technology that integrates solar, storage and high voltage direct current transmission technologies to meet the large-scale demand for renewable energy,” he said. “We want this world-leading project to create a step-change in the Indo-Pacific’s capability to achieve net zero ambitions and economic growth sustained by renewable energy.”

The company said the project would be capable of supplying up to 15% of Singapore’s electricity needs, starting from 2028, via the “world’s largest renewable energy transmission network”. It would create 350 ongoing and more than construction 1,500 jobs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 8.6m tonnes a year, it said.

Cannon-Brookes said the announcement was “a big step towards realising our potential of becoming one of the world’s largest energy exporters”.

“Australia can become a renewable energy superpower. We can and should tap into our solar resources that could power the world five times over,” he said.

The announcement coincided with EnergyAustralia telling workers at the Mount Piper coal-fired power plant it would close by 2040, two years earlier than scheduled, as the company committed to exit coal power by that date. Analysts and climate activists said 2040 was too late, citing a United Nations call based on scientific evidence that developing companies needed to stop burning coal by 2030.

The treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, planned to tell business leaders on Friday that Australia had a lot to lose if others believed it was not transitioning to a clean economy along with the rest of the world.

https://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2021/Rose-wastewater-surveillance-database

As public health leaders worldwide scramble to contain COVID-19’s delta variant, researchers at Michigan State University know what can provide early signs of the virus and help with critical decisions — sewage.

MSU is helping develop the Wastewater SARS Public Health Environmental Response, or W-SPHERE, a global center for data and public health use cases on SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater. This online data repository and global map is now open for access and sharing across the globe.

W-SPHERE is part of the Global Water Pathogen Project, or GWPP, a resource on pathogens supporting sanitation and safe water and promoting quantitative information via monitoring of sewage, fecal sludges and freshwaters to inform public health measures.

MSU’s Joan Rose, one of GWPP’s project leaders, also is leading W-SPHERE in collaboration with University of California Merced, KWR Water Research Institute and Venthic Technologies. W-SPHERE is being developed as part of a larger wastewater surveillance project led by PATH, a global health non-profit.

“We know that early after being infected with SARS-CoV-2, both people with symptoms and those without, excrete the virus in their feces which ends up in wastewater,” said Rose who is the MSU Homer Nowlin Endowed Chair in Water Research, and professor in the Departments of Fisheries and Wildlife, and Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences.

“This is why sewage provides a real-time view of trends in community infection, earlier than other surveillance systems,” Rose said. “This can benefit society greatly since public health officials can be overwhelmed when monitoring individuals to obtain good data supporting vaccination strategies, implementation of safety measures and policy decisions for example on operating schools and other businesses.”

W-SPHERE’s interdisciplinary team of environmental virologists and public health specialists, as well as engineering professionals present global data visualized on dynamic maps on a global and country scale with options to zoom in regionally at a spatial level, protecting the anonymity of the facility and enable examination of the spatial and temporal trends of SARS-CoV-2.

Currently, more than 2,691 cities and counties across the world, scientists and utilities are monitoring wastewater for SARS-CoV-2, or have communicated that they will be setting up for monitoring soon. The goal is to continue to grow the W-SPHERE adding more public databases in the next 6 months.

The W-SPHERE research team at MSU includes Ni****a D’Souza and Andri Rachmadi, both post doctoral research associates in Rose’s Water Quality, Environmental and Molecular Microbiology laboratory

Cartrack Holdings Ltd., a transportation-data company, was taken private by its founder and listed on Nasdaq under the name Karooooo Ltd. The firm needed more exposure to international investment funds focused on technology, Chief Executive Officer Zak Calisto said.
Revego Africa Energy Ltd., an investor in South African renewable projects, had planned to raise as much as 1.5 billion rand but opted instead to pursue a capital raising in the private market, CEO Reyburn Hendricks said.

The lack of IPOs and exodus from the JSE Ltd. could also be linked to South Africa’s near-stagnant economy and spiraling unemployment figures. The corruption-tainted tenure of former President Jacob Zuma and the subsequent coronavirus pandemic have weakened investor risk appetite, said Citi’s Munalula, while a riot and looting spree that followed Zuma’s arrest in July only exacerbated the situation.

“The long and short of it is South Africa’s economy is the over-riding factor,” Munalula said.
Still, there are reasons to believe in a recovery. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg predict gross domestic product will expand 4.2% in 2021 after contracting the most in a century last year. Rising investment in renewable energy worldwide should also bode well for South African firms, which could benefit from a new government policy allowing more private power generation.
A number of companies are privately contemplating listings from 2022, according to Richard Stout, head of equity capital markets at Standard Bank Group Ltd.

Those to have made their intentions public include medical-cannabis firm Cilo Cybin Pharmaceutical Ltd., while Bushveld Minerals Ltd., a London-listed vanadium miner, has said it remains interested in a potential listing on the JSE.

South Africa’s large state-owned companies may also have scope to raise funds via an equity sale, though this may “require some mind-set change,” according to John Slettevold, head of South Africa at UBS Group AG.

“We certainly don’t subscribe to the view that the JSE is facing an existential crisis,” Stout said.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-16/ipo-mania-skips-africa-where-fast-growing-firms-prefer-debt?srnd=markets-vp

A global surge in initial public offerings has so far eluded sub-Saharan Africa.
Companies have raised a record $467 billion on the world’s stock exchanges during the first eight months of this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Yet in Johannesburg, home of Africa’s largest bourse, 21 companies have instead de-listed in 2021. Smaller exchanges in Accra, Nairobi and Lagos have been similarly quiet.

The world’s highest unemployment rate and a lack of confidence in South Africa’s economic recovery are pushing companies toward more affordable funding sources. Firms in the continent’s most-industrialized nation, especially smaller businesses, have been finding it easier and cheaper to raise debt to fund growth than issue shares, Mate Munalula, co-head of markets for Citigroup Inc. in the country, said an interview.

“Being listed can be perceived as more onerous, procedural and administrative when running a small entity,” he said.
Another reason is that technology and digital startups in the country are in short supply, yet that sector has accounted for a major part of the global IPO rush. Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Global Inc. raised $4.4 billion in the U.S. in June, while KakaoBank Corp., South Korea’s first internet-only lender to go public, sold $2.2 billion of stock and soared more than 70% in its trading debut.
South Africa has two fast-growing tech firms in branchless lender TymeBank, backed by billionaire Patrice Motsepe, and payments company Yoco, but both have sourced cash outside the equity-capital markets. TymeBank raised $109 million in February, at a valuation of 8 billion rand ($530 million). Yoco attracted $83 million in July.

In Nigeria, fintech companies are emerging on the radar of high-profile investors. But U.S. firm Stripe Inc. agreed to pay $200 million to buy out Lagos-based Paystack, and Flutterwave Inc. said it would look to New York as a potential IPO destination.

Wireless carriers MTN Group Ltd. and Airtel Africa Plc have indicated a willingness to spin off fast-growing fintech or mobile-money arms, valuing them at billions of dollars. Though in both cases an IPO could be years away.

“When you look at disruptors that are listing to attract capital, in South Africa we’ve been quite a laggard,” said Kyle Wales, portfolio manager at Flagship Asset Management. “E-commerce penetration in South Africa is 3%. In China the same ratio is 25%.”

Three Firms That Opted Out
Comair Ltd., the South African partner of British Airways, was put into bankruptcy protection amid Covid-19 travel restrictions. The carrier was later rescued by private investors and de-listed.

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