This amazing technology produces ethanol from green waste, including domestic grass and leaves, unlike existing technologies that currently influence the food supply around the world by producing ethanol from sugarcane, corn and grass. rod. Calls from the United Nations to ban the production of ethanol from food crops are currently being discussed, which makes this discovery even more significant.

This process extracts ethanol through a fermentation process and takes less than 24 hours to complete, producing ethanol (95%) and compost. Many different plant species were tested during the experimental phase and yields of 40-80% for ethanol and 60-70% for compost were recorded. This groundbreaking achievement was developed by South Africa-based Morangaphanda Technologies (Moratech). The company was founded by Wessel Roux and Daniel Mogano, and is a leading developer of new renewable energy technologies.

In addition, the raw material for the process is abundant and easily accessible. Municipalities are currently investigating ways to divert waste from landfills due to capacity issues, and currently have to incur expensive tipper fees for waste disposal. The importance of this technology is that all the green waste that is currently dumped in abundance in municipal landfills can be used and converted into ethanol, ethanol gel and compost. The average person generates 200 grams of yard waste each day, so waste from just 5,000 people equals a ton of green waste per day.

The ethanol yield per ton of green waste is 500 litres. Ethanol is widely traded around the world and in demand by refineries for blending into fuel (E15 contains 15% ethanol), and other users include the pharmaceutical and food industries. A specific blend of 8% ethanol with gasoline by DME will increase demand in South Africa. The international market has also increased the target mix. Currently world production is 36 billion liters. This is projected to increase to 210 billion liters by 2030.

Flammable ethanol gel is a safer substitute for paraffin and is also colored to prevent children from accidentally swallowing the product. Provides more cost effective energy solutions to the underdeveloped part of the community.

Compost generated from plant material is free of weeds and is an excellent food source for plants. Compost is a commercial commodity and various mixtures of chemicals can be added to produce fertilizers, which can be used by the council and the public. Incentives could be introduced to separate yard waste from municipal solid waste (MSW), for example one free bag of compost for every tonne of yard waste delivered. It can also be used to grow more raw material, making the entire process completely renewable.

Due to the constant and cheap production cost of this process, I predict that it will conquer the world! In addition to the pressure to use food crops to produce ethanol while people are starving, existing technologies also have other negative factors that influence the price. First, they obtain raw material at a variable cost, and second, they have to incur costs for harvesting and transporting said raw material. The main existing processing plants are located in the United States and Brazil. The only major producer of ethanol in South Africa is Sasol, which produces it from its Fischer-Tropsch process as a by-product, at an estimated 110 million gallons of ethanol per year. New market entrants like Ethanol Africa find it difficult to be economically viable at current maize prices. Major sugar producers plan to build an ethanol plant that will use sugar cane waste. The risk is that if more sugarcane is planted to feed ethanol production, it may negatively influence the price of sugar, which is the main objective of these producers.

Other current Moratech renewable energy projects include the CO2 to methanol conversion project. With the threat of global warming looming over us, we need to use technology to reduce the amount of CO2 in the air. Its technology uses CO2 gas and hydrogen to produce methanol that is used by the chemical industry. The main beneficiaries of this technology will be coal-fired power plants and large emitters of carbon dioxide. Carbon credits can also be claimed for the reduction of CO2 gas. Moratech’s future renewable energy projects include the Waste-to-Electricity and Heat-to-Electricity projects.

I believe in promoting innovative products and services that provide sustainability and good value for money, and this is definitely one of them. Well done Mortech!