Senegal: creating fuel for cooking and improving food production with biomass waste
IHE Delft researcher Mostafa Ahmed shares insights about research to investigate whether bio- and agricultural waste can be used to create fuel and to improve soil for food production in Senegal.
Climate change is significantly reducing the productivity of farms in Africa. With African economies relying heavily on agriculture – the sector employs about two-thirds of the continent’s working population - the decline in productivity could bring far-reaching consequences. Action is needed to mitigate the consequences of climate change.
I work with Senegalese colleagues at the Université Assane SECK de Ziguinchor (UASZ) to research how hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) – a process that involves heat and pressure – can be used to transform local plant waste into hydrochar, a solid fuel that can be used for cooking, soil amendment, pollutant adsorbent, and more. This has the potential to transform the complex challenge of managing abundant waste biomass into promising business opportunities that create jobs in rural African communities and contribute to the continent’s sustainable development.
I travelled to Senegal in December 2022 to supervise the construction of a pilot HTC reactor in a workshop in Dakar. The reactor will be used at UASZ to process waste biomass, including from an invasive plant called Typha that grows in abundance on the banks of the Senegal River, waste from cashew nut production and possibly cow manure.
My research is part of the Bio4Africa project, which aims to empower smallholder farmers to generate new sources of income by creating value from locally available biomass. In this way, it seeks to encourage the bio-economy in rural Africa. My work aims to strengthen the local capacity in Senegal so that people there can use bio-based solutions adapted to local needs and contexts.
HTC has an enormous potential to create value from waste biomass, which is abundant in Ziguinchor. Still, any optimal and sustainable solution involves several waste conversation technologies, and in addition to HTC, anaerobic digestion has potential for the Ziguinchor area. This technology would be a good complement to HTC, as it is suitable for types of plant waste different to those that can be processed with HTC technology. In an added bonus, HTC can treat the by-products of anaerobic digestion and vice versa – this maximizes the possible energy and resource recovery.
The construction of the pilot unit and the process to certify it, is set to conclude by the end of February 2023. Then, the reactor will be ready for use at UASZ. We will continue to research to identify the optimum HTC operational parameters for each biomass, as well the ideal processing method for each hydrochar use.
As an African myself – I am Egyptian - I strongly believe in the need to improve livelihoods in Africa, and to strengthen the continent’s resilience against climate change. These are also the core goals of the Bio4Africa project. Waste management is an important part of reaching these goals
In Africa, little attention is paid to this a critical challenge, which is unfortunate as a mismanagement of bio waste accounts for a considerable amount of the continent’s methane emissions. I am convinced that hydrothermal carbonization is a suitable approach, among others, to ease energy shortages and improve waste management while also reducing methane emissions and supporting communities’ social and economic growth. I believe the outcomes and lessons learnt from Bio4Africa will contribute to developing realistic solutions for bio waste management in low-income countries.