Leif Abildgaard, Chris-Marine’s Chief Commercial Officer + valve spindle + chris-marine

Across the African continent and beyond, millions of households, industries, institutions, and mines depend on power plants for electricity and other essential utilities. Ensuring these plants run efficiently and sustainably is critical to meeting current energy needs without jeopardizing the future.

Diesel and gas power plants are complex systems that rely on large 2- and 4-stroke engines to generate electricity. Maintaining these engines is crucial to ensuring a consistent power supply. Harsh operating conditions can lead to issues like abnormal engine cylinder liner wear, valve/seat leakage, and seized or damaged piston rings, all of which can cause operational failures and personnel safety risks.

For over 60 years, Chris-Marine, a Swedish company, has provided essential support to power plant owners around the world, helping them keep their engines running with minimal downtime. Specializing in the design, manufacture, production and sale of precision tools and machines used when monitoring and overhauling diesel and gas engines in power plants and merchant vessels, Chris-Marine operates globally through subsidiaries, sales and service teams, workshops and agents. 

Recognized for its three strong product brands Obel-P®, Chris-Marine®, and LEMAG®, Its customers can be found worldwide, including in Tanzania, Ivory coast, Madagascar, Mauritius, Nigeria, Mozambique and South Africa.

Leif Abildgaard, Chris-Marine’s Chief Commercial Officer, emphasizes that, in order to increase the lifetime of power plant engines and reduce downtime, it is crucial to regularly monitor the condition of the engines and perform professional maintenance, by using high-quality precision machines and tools, operated by trained staff. This approach helps reduce engine wear, avoid costly shutdowns, and prevent engine failure and off-hire situations.

Complete monitoring & maintenance solutions

Chris-Marine offers an all-inclusive monitoring and maintenance solutions designed for all types of diesel and gas engines that provide electricity for base load, grid stability, emergency generators and oil & gas applications. These include monitoring and maintenance machines and tools, service of equipment and training conducted by super-users.

“With Chris-Marine’s extensive product range and expertise in engine monitoring and reconditioning, customers receive everything they need from a single global supplier, which significantly facilitates the running of their engines,” Leif Abildgaard adds.

Monitoring Tools 

Chris-Marine offers a range of tools for monitoring of 4-stroke engines, like peak pressure indicators, pressure and temperature calibrators, surface roughness measuring devices, crankshaft deflection indicators and gauges, as well as combustion chamber testers. They all contribute to determining if engine maintenance is needed.

LEMAG® ECI 

LEMAG ECI is an electronic cylinder pressure indicator that improves engine uptime and lowers operating costs. It allows power plant technicians to balance, fine-tune and monitor main and auxiliary engines. LEMAG ECI takes continuous engine readings and detects problems before downtime occurs.

LEMAG ECI has been designed to withstand the harsh conditions found in power plants and onboard ships. Its ergonomic handheld unit shows measurements on a large color display, and it is easy to use even while wearing gloves. Confirmation that the measurement process was successful is provided on-site in real time. The results can be copied to a PC and analyzed with the included software or sent to the superintendent for further comparison with historical or reference data.

The step-by-step graphic instructions for different tasks, as well as easy-to-understand menus, make LEMAG ECI easy to oversee, even for new operators.

Maintenance tools

Chris-Marine not only offers an extensive range of maintenance machines and tools for grinding & machining of cylinder heads, cylinder liners and sealing surfaces, but also offers machines for engine parts cleaning, hydraulic power units, test rigs, accessories and consumables. 

Chris-Marine® PTL 

For more than three decades, Chris-Marine’s service crew has re-machined thousands of engine blocks around the world with PTL, a portable lathe used for in-situ machining of engine frames on medium-speed diesel engines. PTL prevents water leakage, ensures continuous engine operation and significantly reduces engine downtime.

PTL is a highly versatile, precise and robust machine. It has a stepless feed for vertical and horizontal movements and can be equipped with mounting adapters specifically designed for individual engine types. PTL has a capacity of machining from Ø300 to Ø900mm and operates at three different levels, ie, upper liner (machining of landing surface and upper guiding surface), lower liner (machining of the lower sealing surface) and intermediate liner (machining of sealing/guiding surface). 

According to Chris-Marine, engine parts cleaning must not be forgotten.
For a power plant engine to work efficiently its various parts need to be thoroughly cleaned to remove scale deposits, oil deposits and rust. Chris-Marine therefore offers a variety of cleaning solutions, like single stage aqua spray washers for overall cleaning of engine parts, as well as advanced ultrasonic cleaners capable of reaching every orifice.

Chris-Marine® UCS 4600 

Chris-Marine’s UCS 4600 is a cleaning system which caters for the larger industrious cleaning requirements, including the cleaning of engine parts like intercoolers, valve spindles, fuel injectors, cylinder heads, pistons and heat exchangers. UCS 4600 is electronically driven and has 112 PZT transducers generating ultrasound waves. The waves vibrate the cleaning fluid at very high velocity, thereby creating a superior cavitation process. High-quality transducers and generators integrated into the system provide ultrasonic efficiency leading to reduced cleaning time. This is an efficient and gentle cleaning method, which extends the lifetime of costly engine parts. The system is user friendly and easy to operate thanks to its color touch panel.

Service and training

Monitoring and maintenance machines & tools are necessary to keep engines running, and so are skilled service and maintenance engineers who can operate the machines.
Chris-Marine’s service teams have hands-on experience of jobs at power plants and in mines, onboard cruise ships and other marine vessels. They regularly travel to customer sites to support and advise the customer’s own technical crew. Chris-Marine’s service teams are often involved in projects like PTL machining and training customers’ technicians to use PTL. 

Customers are also offered remote support around the clock. By having this kind of flexibility, Chris-Marine not only helps its customers reduce costs, but also provides them with more service options to choose from. Chris-Marine also offers rental options for customers who wish to carry out a job but aren’t interested in purchasing a machine.

Long-term relationships, a success factor

Central to Chris-Marine’s success is its commitment to building long-term relationships.
The company has not only an extensive product & service portfolio that benefits customers in many sectors, but also believes that taking a personal approach is crucial when interacting with clients. Getting to know clients and their needs in detail, and over time, allows
Chris-Marine to act as a trusted partner and advisor, be it power plant workshops, dockyard workshops or onboard ships.
Chris-Marine also works closely with major engine makers, to design and develop the high-quality machines and tools necessary to keep their engines in top condition. 

“Chris-Marine’s power plant customers can rest assured that they get high-quality products, service and support when needed. And down the line, the millions of households, institutions, mines and industries who rely on electricity can go about their business without
any power interruption. That’s what it’s all about,” Leif Abildgaard concludes.

Measuring and Managing Climate Change-related Risks

While the JSE-listed South African mining companies – guided by the JSE’s Sustainability and Climate Disclosure requirements – are expected to perform better on climate change disclosure, it is imperative that more mining companies, both in South Africa and the wider Southern African region, measure and manage their climate change-related risks, to proactively mitigate potential impacts and seize opportunities for long-term value creation. As the saying goes, “you cannot manage what you do not measure.”

 

Awareness of future climate-related risks informs strategies to improve the resilience of our regional mining community, and create new and exciting opportunities. An urgent shift from a compliance-based approach to a more proactive and strategic approach is crucial for enhancing long-term resilience and creating new business opportunities for mining companies in Southern Africa.