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| Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane await her turn to |
MINISTER of Science and Technology Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane launched a R37,5 million biorefinery development facility in Durban on Tuesday.
The former minister of Energy said the facility, Biorefinery Industry Development Facility (BIDF), was a welcome change to the headache-inducing petro-chemical refineries she visited in her former portfolio.
CSIR manager for Forestry Products, Professor Bruce Sithole, said the biorefinery was funded by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) to address the issue of biomass wastage through technology, starting with the forestry industry, which is seeing a steady decline in paper use around the world.
He said SA’s pulp and paper mills currently use only 47% of a tree in their production process, but the Council for Scientific and Industry Research (CSIR), in partnership with the University of KwaZulu-Natal, is implementing a new technique to use up to 90% of a tree.
Sithole said this new process will produce chemicals and other high-value products that will contribute to the evolution of current mills into biorefineries.
He said one wood mill can spend R20 million to dispose of waste, which can now be benificiated instead. Sithole said all biowaste offers opportunities for profit, from tyres, which are mostly crude oil, to chicken feathers, which are mostly keratin that can be turned into nano-
fibres.
fibres.
The first community to benefit from a biorefinery will be in Harding on the south coast, where eThala Group is planting 7 500 ha sweet sorghum to refine into biodegradable plastic and biofuels, while generating its own power by gasifying the bagasse. eThala MD and CEO Nompumelelo Tembe told The Witness the first phase of the biofuel and power plants will create 2 500 upstream jobs, but this will increase more than 10-fold when the power, fuel and chemical bio-plants run at full capacity.
