Seeking the best technology to provide nickel essentials, while encouraging conscientiousness and respect for our environment are what Vale Indonesia continuously puts up with. Throughout the years of our operation, we endeavor to always improve and advance technologies to support the production by comprising to nurture the environment and concern the local community's life that focus on long-term benefits and continuance. Mining and nickel processing, facilities support, environmental performances – including Roller Compacted Concrete (RCC) of Karebbe hydropower plant, baghouse filtering systems, SAP implementation and many more.

RCC Dam Construction

The Karebbe hydropower plant is constructed with the Roller-Compacted Concrete (RCC) technology – that's as well applied to the Balambano hydropower plant, the first Indonesia's RCC dam.

The RCC construction method earned popularity as it proved to be less expensive than the conventional methods. To some extent, the dam project also can be completed quickly as it requires less volume of material. In addition, RCC dams allow for savings on the construction of spillways, outlet conduits, river diversion schemes, and related features that can be designed to be shorter and less material-intensive than with earth or backfill dam construction.

For more than 30 years RCC method has been world-widely recognized, it is renowned for the design and construction as RCC can use local materials. RCC aggregate materials applied in Balambano dam was also utilized in Karebbe dam.

The Karebbe hydropower plant has 68-meter height of dam with 197-meter length, and 188,000 m3 of volume. The plant has three spillways with one central door and overflow, while penstock pipe is positioned is the dam's base.

Furthermore, the powerhouse is under its spillways with the generators that has power capacity of 90 megawatts. Tailrace modification is formed as an artificial canal to make the water consumption is efficient for the plant generator.

Baghouse Filtering Technology

From the time the nickel ore is mined, the pesky dust is already present. As soon as the ore is loaded into dump truck 777, the dust starts spreading everywhere. This continues when the ore-laden earth is dried in the dryer, when the ore is processed in the kiln, and when the furnace is smelting the calcine. The ore-laden earth continually produces dust. And the dust was a real daily annoyance.

Basically, baghouse technology works like a vacuum cleaner, in the sense that it sucks in and traps particles with a cloth filter. Baghouse is a broad-term used for a type of air-pollution control equipment constructed from bags of cloth that filters the dust emissions. The baghouse filter is a part of the dust emission control system that has been applied by the company since early 2005.

Vale Indonesia installed four baghouses, which each of baghouses has 12 compartments, that each of them equipped with 360 filter bags. The baghouse is then connected to the furnaces. Today, the kilns and dryer stacks are the only remaining ones that still have visible emissions.

In order to minimize the effect of dust, various dust filtering devices were installed as well. One of these devices is the wet scrubber. This device looks like a water sprinkler and is used to spray the dust that are flying in the air to bring it down to the ground. There's also a device that utilizes ESP (Electrostatic Precipitator) technology to capture the dust using static electricity. The flying dust is pulled by an electrostatic-effect.

The latest one is the baghouse. Before the dust-laden furnace gas enters the stack, it passes through hundreds of filter bags. By the time the gas exits the baghouse, almost all of the dust has been filtered out. The filtering efficiency of the baghouse is an almost-perfect 99.9 percent.

SAP Global System Implementation

Previously, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system used was Ellipse. The Ellipse version was end of support in July 2010 and needed to be upgraded or replaced. Aiming to simplify and standardize processes, business planning and business management across Vale units in the world, it had defined a strategy to implement and rollout a global ERP system, SAP, to support all its businesses.

This ERP system changing from Ellipse to SAP in Indonesia was Go Live on July 4, 2011, under the project work of One Vale. There is one centralized database thorough all Vale units with the purpose to globalize and consolidate our operations. The SAP implementation is not only a change in IT system, but it also changes the way we do business to be more efficient and prepare us for the future growth.

It integrates multi-business processes such as production, maintenance, material management, warehouse management, sales and distribution, finance, etc; and also provides a central database of information for all above processes.

The SAP implementation would improve Vale Indonesia business processes in terms of mitigating risk, better decision making and improving reporting, to name a few. This optimal system also attempts the whole units of Vale to achieve the vision of becoming the largest mining company in the world.