eBusiness Weekly
Martin Kadzere
Government is looking at reviving the Mt Hampden bio diesel plant–about 18 kilometres north of Harare initially established to process jatropha seed. However, this time it will process different types of feedstock, Higher Education, Science and Technology Development, Professor Amon Murwira has said.
The bio-diesel plant, built nearly a decade ago has never operated on a commercial basis due to inadequate supplies of jatropha seed and a general level of ignorance of the fundamental requirements of any larger scale agricultural or horticultural production.
Jatropha (Jatropha curcas) originates in Central America but was planted on large scale in the Cape Verde Islands before 1900, and was reportedly being grown there as early as 1836.
The Government had planned to transform vast lands into “oil fields” but the project failed to take off due to financial constraints to support farmers. Even with the availability of funds, some experiments had shown that to achieve optimal yields, jatropha plants should be at least three metres apart, thus growing it on a commercial basis could have significantly compromised the land for food crops.
Few out grower schemes were introduced in Mudzi and Mutoko but failed to thrive.
The case of failed jatropha projects is however not limited to Zimbabwe alone. In most cases these ventures have since suffered financial collapse or significant loss of grower interest, due to much lower than anticipated yields and higher than predicted costs. The most dramatic of these collapses have often not been well-publicised and the fate of up to 800,000 ha of proposed plantings in Myanmar (Burma) is a prime example.
Some analysts argue that it was premature for Zimbabwe to have a plant of that nature in the absence of vibrant out grower schemes to produce feed stock for the factory.
The plant has capacity of producing up to 100 million litres of bio diesel per annum, when fully integrated and supported by the availability of sufficient feedstock.
Analysts say a number of issues were overlooked prior to the setting up of the plant with the major one being the ability of farmers to grow and supply enough oil seeds.
As such, Prof Murwira has emphasised the need to re-design the plant to process a variety if feedstock.
“We are in the process of transferring the plant to my ministry from the Ministry of Energy and Power Development,” Prof Murwira told Business Weekly in interview. “We are immediately going to look for the money to run it and our ambition is to make sure that it takes different types of feedstock. In fact, any successful bio- fuel plant depends on the ability to process a variety of feedstock.”
The introduction of the jatropha about 10 years ago coupled with a ready market and perceived benefits saw a jatropha fever gripping Zimbabwe. The Government had also made a deliberate effort to entice communal and resettled farmers to grow jatropha.
The original strategy was the plant would have significant backward and forward integration synergies with jatropha and other oilseed farmers and end-users of diesel.
Bio energy experts say the sustainable way of reviving the project was to look for alternative bio mass to feed into the plant. “We need to look at life cycles of alternative feed stocks such algae so that we can have sufficient feedstock to run the factory,” said Professor Ida Sithole-Niang, a bio chemistry expert with the University of Zimbabwe.
Algae are small aquatic organisms that convert sunlight into energy and store it in the form of oil.
Globally, scientists are researching the best strains of algae and developing the most efficient farming practices. The key to algae’s potential as a renewable fuel source lies in increasing algal biomass productivity. Some researchers say algae could be 10 or even 100 times more productive than traditional bioenergy feedstock.
Achieving these high productivities is a key challenge to realizing the promise of sustainable and affordable algal biofuels. Once harvested, algae can be readily processed into the raw material to make fuels for cars, trucks, trains, and planes.
While commercial production is still a pipe dream, algae holds great promise to become a reliable, home-grown fuel source to reduce the nation’s reliance on foreign oil.
