Gaz du Cameroun

SOCAVER – Thermal Case Study

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SOCAVER (Société Camerounaise de Verrerie) is a subsidiary of the leading Cameroon brewery, SABC (Société Anonyme des Brasseries du Cameroun).

SOCAVER

SOCAVER, which is the only glass factory in the Central Africa region, blew its first bottle on 1 July 1970 and today supplies a host of African countries with its products. Specialising in the manufacture of hollow glass, SOCAVER has two furnaces which produce annually 15,000 tons of molten glass for one and 35 000 tons for the other. With a fully automated installation, the line “background” can decorate between 3000 and 6000 bottles per hour and has a bottle printing station for up to four colours.

SOCAVER markets nearly 100 brands of products including:

  • decorated and undecorated bottles
  • vials
  • pots and jars

The Gaz Du Cameroun team worked with Socaver and SABC, one of Cameroon’s most prominent companies, to carry out a conversion from heavy fuel oil to gas for heating a melting furnace. Working through a detailed engineering schedule that was signed off by the company’s German based engineering team, the connection was successfully completed in 2014.

Original parameters (before conversion)

Melting Furnace with 06 HFO burners
HFO Consumption 14 000 litres/day

Conversion scope of work for SOCAVER

  • Assessment of gas consumption
  • Location of PRMS* position on customer’s plant
  • Design of steel pipe route to determine the total length of steel pipe or HDPE* (plastic) pipe (by Designer, Project Coordinator and the customer)
  • Sizing of the steel pipe
  • Sending of the design to the customer for validation
  • Sending of the design to procurement for sourcing of contractors
  • Procurement of material needed for installation
  • Procurement of testing and validation (by local consultants such as Bureau Veritas, HYDRAC and SGS)
  • Installation of gas supply line (service and customer lines)
  • Replacement of fuel burners by gas burners
  • NDT* (radio) testing (by Bureau Veritas) to evaluate strength and tightness (by GDC)
  • Commissioning of the PRMS (by Emmanuel AYUK)
  • Commissioning of the burners (by GDC if bought by us, if not by the customer)
  • Gas awareness to customer’s team by GDC’s QHSE*
  • Commissioning and Start up