SA scientists to showcase hybrid energy processing plant prototype at COP 17
- By http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/sa-scientists-to-showcase-hybrid-energy-processing-plant-prototype-at-cop-17-2011-10-21
Scientists from the Centre of Material and Process Synthesis (COMPS), together with the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation (Necsa), will exhibit a prototype of its Fischer-Tropsch (FT) synthesis-based mobile conversion technology unit that converts biomass to electricity and crude synthetic fuel, at the seventeenth United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties, in Durban, in December.
The modular unit, dubbed the BeauTiFuel project, uses the same energy conversion technology as the centre’s original Garbage-to-Energy (Gate) project, but has been adjusted to focus on smaller communities with lower energy and fuel consumption requirements.
The process allows solid material with a carbon content to be converted using plasma gasification, supplied by Necsa, and FT synthesis, supplied by the University of the Witwaters-rand (Wits), emitting lower carbon emissions than other processing technologies, and producing about 1 bl/d of crude synthetic fuel and 0.5 MW of electricity. The plant will be installed in an industrial container, making it fully mobile and fit for use in remote rural and agricultural communities.
“We identified that there was a demand for smaller plants producing between 1 bl/d and 10 bbl/d of synthetic crude fuel from 1 t/d to 10 t/d of waste, which allows the processing of biomass to occur on site and, thus, enables smaller communities or farmers to become self-sufficient in terms of waste disposal and energy generation,” says COMPS director Professor Diane Hildebrandt.
While the Gate project focuses on establishing large-scale permanent processing faci- lities for densely populated urban areas, the BeauTiFuel project uses the same technology on a smaller scale to enable community self-sufficiency.
“This technology will allow the community to develop from a ground-up approach by becoming self-reliant. Suddenly, the local community has value in materials that are already available to them, but previously held no inherent value. Now they are able to earn an income off these items previously considered simply waste products,” Hildebrandt says.
The plant can process biomass, including grass, manure, garbage and human waste, and deal with both small-scale energy-generation issues and the disposal of waste products.
The centre, based at Wits, has experienced challenges in getting the project off the ground owing to bureaucracy and tender processes.
“Tender processes involving garbage waste disposal usually cover the collection of garbage and its storage in municipal dumps. Our project involves using this garbage as raw biomass, which is not typically accommodated in the tenders. The project also falls under a number of departments, such as the Department of Water and Environmental Affairs, as well as the Department of Energy and the Department of Public Works, which makes coordination efforts challenging,” she explains.
The project was initiated after over 20 years of research efforts by COMPS into FT synthesis and green energy generation to achieve its ambition of creating a sustainable energy solution that could directly impact and spe- cifically benefit African communities.
“Access to energy and quality of life are linked, and we need to be able to supply energy reliably, cheaply and efficiently if we are to improve the quality of life of people in Africa,” says Hildebrandt.
Further, the plant developed for the BeauTiFuel project focuses not only on efficiency, but is also robust enough to operate in communities where there may be a technological skills shortage. The plant will be low maintenance, requiring only limited technical knowledge with low running costs.
COMPS and Necsa are seeking investment for the BeauTiFuel project, which requires R10-million start-up capital, and R2-million thereafter to produce each mobile plant. The centre expects that the manufacturing cost of each plant can ultimately be reduced to R1-million.