find out more

About

Us

fontpagebioecodevorg
Preparation and implementation of projects for the benefit of rural communities s

We Develop Bioeconomies!

The mission of Bioeconomy Developments NPC (“BioEcoDev”) is the preparation and implementation of small rural projects or businesses in the agriculture and forestry sectors.

By definition, the bioeconomy encompasses the production of renewable biological resources and their conversion into food, feed, biobased products and bioenergy via innovative and efficient technologies.

On the one side, South Africa is one of the world’s most biologically diverse country and on the other side, we have a significant rate of unemployment. The team at BioEcoDev is committed to put people into jobs by creating projects or enterprises. What ever BioEcoDev does, its success is measured by the solutions we find for or impact we have on:

Society (especially with regard to employment of women and youth),

Environment (e.g. climate change mitigation, water/resources efficiencies) and

Food security.

The bioeconomy is not only in its infancy in South Africa, but also at an early stages of development in the rest of Africa and the world. The opportunities are therefore big. The following two examples illustrate the areas that BioEcoDev will use as platforms to grow the green economy in rural South Africa:

Platform 1: Globally, biomass is planned to account for 60% of total renewable energy use by 2030 (IRENA): ±40% of this total would originate from agricultural residues and wastes, i.e. a multi-trillion tonnes per annum business! In South Africa, there no infrastructure for a biomass based economy (e.g. power, fuels or chemicals).

Platform 2: The 2015 WWF report, “Farming Facts and Figures” (a snapshot of the country’s agricultural sector) highlights that only a handful of farmers feed the country: it is estimated that 20% of South Africa’s farms supply 80% of the food in the formal retail chain. Commercial farmers account for 95% of the country’s locally produced food. This suggests that the remaining 5% of food is produced by the 220 000 emerging farmers and the 2 million subsistence farmers in the country. – Unemployment rate in South Africa is over 25% (4th quarter 2015).

BioEcoDev uses a practical combination of knowledge and technologies to develop value-chains that benefit small-scale farmers or foresters to access (new) markets and/or grow new or additional crops.

We are currently building the “not for profit business” and its communications platform to provide comprehensive information of our projects, in order to solicit donor or grant finance for a selection of projects that are “shovel ready”.

 

Source: ConnectingTheDots.Solutions

New Agricultural Economy

796318b225_8f704c6e91e045c72378c71d940a59ce-xl
Co-ordination and Integration of Multi Value Chains

GreenEnergyPark™: Empowering Africa’s New Agricultural Economy

DalinYebo’s GreenEnergyPark™ will contribute to Africa’s food security and create permanent rural jobs, because these small economic hubs are located in the centres of agricultural areas and its profits will flow back to the farming community. The anchor tenants of the GreenEnergyPark™ are a furfural biorefinery and an electricity co-generation plant, which will provide off-grid power to other tenants, such as micro maize millers (or to the surrounding villages). Furfural biorefineries have been operating since 1922 (e.g in the USA or China). Since 2001, our technology provider, International Furan Technology (Pty) Ltd (IFT), has modernised these old process and made them more energy efficient.

Non-food biomass will be procured locally. Such feedstock could be the residues of the food-chain, like corncobs, oat hulls, rice hulls, sunflower husks, cotton seed hulls, sugarcane bagasse or could be forestry residues. Alternative feedstock available are energy crops (e.g. sweet sorghum) that have been selected for their suitability to grow in less fertile areas or as in-fill crops for current sugar plantations.

Large-scale biorefineries may succeed in the western world, but in our opinion, Africa needs smaller production units. IFT provides smaller scale production plants that are the basis for the µ-BioRefinery™ and n-BioRefinery™ designs. DalinYebo has developed the business plans on the basis of a decentralised operation of several small production units. The sole hurdle that’s left to jump-start the New African Agricultural Economy is the development of the biomass supply chains. This activity is location and crop specific. The multi-skilled team at DalinYebo is well experienced to connect the many “dots” in order to co-ordinate and merge farming, processing and global markets, using (or developing) technology and processes that are tailored to specific environments and/or communities.

ConnectingTheDots : Biorefineries will be the biggest short-term contributor to the growth of socioeconomic benefits and a green economy.

From Concept to Commissioning

DalinYebo has solid technical expertise in the bio-renewables space. Its engineers, scientists and project professionals have been involved in the chemical industry (furfural/sugar, ethanol, pulp & paper, etc.) and in electricity generation from direct combustion (i.e. steam generation/steam turbine projects in the sugar and pulp and paper industry).

Experience

Farming

Logistics

Process Plants

Global Marketing

Expertise

Project Structuring and Development

Permitting and Licensing (EIA, IPP, etc.)

Professional Services (Legal, Engineering, Construction, etc.)

Purchase and Off-take Agreements

Since the start of the furfural plant near Durban (South Africa) in the 1970s, South Africa has developed a large knowhow base related to the manufacture of furfural and its many by-products. Whilst the first generation of technical experts have retired. DalinYebo has used their practical knowhow to further build a knowledge base in order to ..

.. provide consulting and mentoring services for the development of the next generation furfural biorefinery.

Such a biorefinery is a first step in building a biobased chemicals and plastics business (e.g. KZN Biobased Chemical Cluster). These biorefineries could also be used as a platform for the manufacture of a range of cellulosic fuels. The images at the end of this page link to a selection of articles that illustrate the versatility and vast potential that exists in this business.

Also See:

Presentation: uThukela GreenEnergyPark™- Biomass-Processing Hub.

Introduction to Ingwavuma GreenEnergyPark™.

Introduction to Yenepa Project.

Explore more dots at dots.dalinyebo.com.

Downloads:

Electricity from Corncobs (Business Plan | Confidential)

uThukela GreenEnergyPark™

Ingwavuma (Business Plan | Confidential)

Furfural: The Platform for KZN Biochemical Cluster (Concept Plan | Confidential)

Source: DalinYebo.com

Latest Articles

Bioeconomy information that (we think) is relevant and interesting for the farm and/or forest to market value chains.