Electricity + Control

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Stellenbosch wins PneuDrive Challenge 2015
The successful PneuDrive Challenge 2015, a mechatronics design
competition for engineering students throughout South Africa has
seen Stellenbosch University once again walk away with top honours.
The theme of this year’s competition was to design a game changer
for the food and beverage industry.The judging panel announced the
TopThreeTeams for the 2015 Competition on Friday 6 November 2015.
First place:
Stellenbosch University
The Mechabrewers team came out tops with their design. The
Stellenbosch University team visited local micro beer brewer, Stel-
lenbrau, and analysed a specific problem – the need for an efficient,
inexpensive and automated application for transporting empty beer
bottles on to the capping machine. The solution proposed by the
team aims to improve and add value to the company by allowing
better utilisation of labour, and improvements in time and efficiency,
by automating the process of transporting empty beer bottles onto
a capping machine, BottleBot, which has a low energy consumption
and can be controlled by a smart phone or tablet device. The BottleBot
can increase efficiency and accuracy through complete automation
and elimination of human error and contamination.
Second place:
WITS University –The Potato Game Changer
This team addressed the problem of transforming waste into useable
energy in a potato chip factory. Potato chip making factories produce
significant quantities of starch laden waste water and solid vegetable
wastes such as potato peels. The starch waste water can be very
harmful to the environment and potato peel waste is of zero value
to factories. At a local chip factory in Gauteng, this waste is presently
underutilised. This project proposes that a system using Anaerobic
Digestion (AD) be employed to dispose of the solid waste and clean
the waste water while producing a useful by-product in the form of
biogas. This biogas can be used to supplement any existing system
in the heating of the chip cookers, reducing energy costs.
Competing students:
Micha Dedekind, Craig Daniel and Richard Grieves under guidance
from Professor Joao Nobre.
Third place (and Innovation prize):
WITS University – AutomatedWarehouse Cleaner
This team from WITS identified a health and safety risk of broken
bottles and spillage on the Rosslyn brewery factory floor. During the
conveyor packing process, filled bottles of beer are often broken due
to the high pressure applied during the filling process. They proposed
an autonomous cleaning machine as their solution to this obviously
unacceptable problem.
Competing students:
Vuledzani Madala, Portia Sibambo, Nkosinathi Shongwe,Tisetso
Ramolobe under guidance of Professor Joao Nobre.
Formal prize giving for this competition takes place in January 2016.
The new theme for 2016 will be announced by end November 2015.
Enquiries: Lindy Ndaba. (SEW-EURODRIVE).Tel. 011 248 7000 or email
or Riaan van Eck (SMC Pneumatics).Tel. 011 568
2407 or email
ROUND UP CONTROL SYSTEMS, AUTOMATION + SYSTEMS ENGINEERING
The judging panel: John Menasce (Hatch), Brian
Abbott (SMC Pneumatics, SA, Johan van Graan
(SEW-EURODRIVE), Riaan van Eck (SMC Pneu-
matics SA), Dr. Mark Gordon (ESKOM), Eugene
Tondolo (South African Fluid Power Association),
Conrad Pilger (SEW-EURODRIVE), Tobias Nittel,
(SEW-EURODRIVE, Germany, Greg Perry (SEW-
EURODRIVE SA).
The Stellenbosch team: Reghardt Pretorius, Johannes Leuvennink,
Madeli du Toit, Josua Blom and Jean Swart.
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