South Africa should add sugar cane to its energy mix. (Businessday.co.za Photo)

South Africa should build an additional five sugar mills in order to stimulate ethanol production, a representative of Brazilian sugar and ethanol equipment group Dedini said on Friday.
Government has identified biofuels as a key industry in its Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative (Asgi-SA) because of its potential to create jobs and lessen the country’s dependence on oil.
Speaking at a biofuel workshop in Johannesburg on Friday, Dedini vice-president Jose Luiz Oliverio said that if the local sugar industry added five more plants to the current 14, it would increase the number of direct jobs from 85000 to 123000.
There are about 47000 registered sugar cane growers that annually produce, on average, 22-million tons of sugar cane.
Oliverio said South Africa should add sugar cane to its energy mix. “The total energy content in sugar is more than that in oil,“ he said.
Sugar producer Tongaat-Hulett last month announced plans to incorporate a 17,6-million-litre-a-year ethanol plant at its Xinavane, Mozambique, plant.
The company said it was also considering bioethanol projects in SA and Swaziland, Businessday.co.za reported.
Representatives of Brazilian government, government-related institutions and the private sector were in South Africa last week to share with their South African counterparts their experience in biofuel.
The Brazilian delegations included deputy mines and energy minister Nelson Jose Hubner, senior officials in the external relations ministry, and representatives of government-related bodies such as Petroleum National Agency and the National Institute of Metrology, Standardization and Industrial Quality.
Brazil is widely considered a pioneer in ethanol production.
The country launched its ethanol program in the mid-70s when its fuel consumption depended on foreign oil.
A government-appointed task team is expected to propose a 10% blending of ethanol in conventional petrol as part of South Africa’s biofuel strategy.
The Central Energy Fund (CEF) and Brazilian energy company Petrobras said on Friday they had signed a memorandum of understanding to conduct a feasibility study with the aim of introducing ethanol as a component of petrol in South Africa.
The two companies said they would consider the feasibility of increasing sugar cane planting in South Africa. “We at CEF have an interest in developing technology for the production of sugar cane ethanol and the introduction of a blending program in South Africa,“ said CEF CEO Mputumi Damane.
Paulo Roberto Costa said Petrobras wanted to expand its production worldwide “so that we can have reliable production to meet the world demand for renewable fuels“.
Brazil’s National Automotive Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association vice-president Elizabeth de Carvalhaes said that out of the total 32000 fuel stations in Brazil, 30000 stocked ethanol.
De Carvalhaes said Brazil was keen to add vehicles to the list of items covered by the free trade agreement between the Southern African Customs Union and the Latin American trade bloc Mercosur.

Romax Technology, the leading supplier of software tools and services for transmissions engineering, has announced that its high profile project to enable a leading South Korean company to develop its own wind turbine units, has successfully completed its halfway stage.
Romax is working with Hyosung, South Korea’s market leading producer of electricity systems, to help the company to design its own wind turbine units and subsequently launch South Korea as a key global player in the industry.
Hyosung has been manufacturing wind turbine equipment for several years, and with Romax’s support looks set to be producing its own units by 2008--making South Korea and Japan, the only major players in the Far East Asian wind turbine market, Newsblaze.com said.
Romax Technology’s role in this major development project began two years after the company secured its ongoing partnership with Hyosung’s Power and Industrial Systems Performance Group, following a successful pitch where it came onboard to help Hyosung to design gearbox systems for wind turbines.
Since this crucial first project, Romax has played a major role--it has assisted in the collation of commercial and engineering market research, helped to devise the concept designs for new models and helped to select the best designs to take forward. Throughout this entire process, Romax has provided continuous testing support and also helped Hyosung achieve its GL certificate--certification essential for wind turbine plant, to prove that it is fit for purpose.
Romax’s world leading transmission and driveline software, RomaxDesigner has also been utilised to great effect throughout the project, allowing continuous virtual product testing and development without the need for physical build testing--with the company also providing bespoke consultancy whenever it has been required.
“Speed is essential to the success of this venture, and Romax Technology has not only provided us with the technology transfer and engineer training to empower our engineers with the expert edge in design and development, but it has also given us the software tools to allow these design solutions to evolve much faster,“ explains Hyosung Vice President, Mr. S. K. Lee.

Hydroelectric projects on both the American and the Canadian sides divert 50 percent to 75 percent of the water in the Niagara River into tunnels to run turbines. (Google File Photo)

Niagara Falls has meant honeymoon since the late 19th century. Oscar Wilde made wisecracks about it; and a song about newlyweds shuffling off to Buffalo for a look at the falls is part of the classic 1933 musical, “42nd Street.“
It’s also the most powerful waterfall in North America, producing more hydroelectric power than any other waterfall in the world. They started making power here about the same time the honeymooners first arrived.
That means it’s looking increasingly attractive to Ontario’s government as an alternative power source as energy costs rise and the government struggles to make sure it has enough electricity. The Ontario authorities have also vowed to shut down the province’s coal-burning power plants, cbsnews.com said.
Now the second-largest tunneling project ever will bring more water to existing turbines on the Canadian side, generating enough new electricity to run 160,000 homes.
“The focus is on how to find as much clean and renewable energy as possible, and this fits the bill,“ says Emad Elsayed, vice president of hydroelectric development at Ontario Power Generation, which is owned by the Ontario government and operates the hydroelectric plants on the Canadian side of the falls.
The giant drilling machine, made by the Robbins Company of Solon, Ohio, will start boring through hard rock in early September. The machine cuts through about 50 feet a day. At that speed, the 6.4 mile tunnel will be ready in 2009.
At 47 feet in diameter, it is 1Ú times the width of the Channel Tunnel between England and France. And it was a lot easier boring under the soft chalk of the English Channel than through hard rock 460 feet below Niagara Falls.
The $535 million tunnel will take 17,500 cubic feet of water per second from the Niagara River above the falls, to the Sir Adam Beck generating station below the falls.
“We are in effect adding more fuel by adding more water, making sure the existing turbines run at top capacity,“ says Elsayed.
The falls on the U.S. side produce even more hydroelectric power than the Canadian side. All that water diversion means there is less water flowing over the falls. Hydroelectric projects on both the American and the Canadian sides divert 50 percent to 75 percent of the water in the Niagara River into tunnels to run turbines.
A 1950 US-Canadian treaty ensures there will be enough water to see, even after the new tunnel is built.

Floodwaters surround storage tanks at an idle oil refinery in September 2005 in Port Arthur, Texas. (AFP File Photo)

Gulf of Mexico oil and gas production is still recovering from massive damage inflicted by hurricanes Katrina and Rita last year and the industry is nervously watching to see what this year holds in store.
A “blessedly quiet“ storm season thus far has allowed exploration companies and refineries to continue repairs and bring damaged offshore rigs back into service, said Caryl Fagot, public affairs specialist with the Gulf of Mexico regional office of the US Minerals Management Service in New Orleans.
As the 2006 hurricane season enters what is typically the most active period, there has been no tropical weather threat to the Gulf of Mexico. The National Weather Service is still predicting an unusually busy hurricane season, but has downgraded its initial prediction of as many as six major hurricanes to three or four, according to Yahoo.com.
As of late June, offshore oil production was down 12 percent from last year and gas extraction was running nine percent below normal, Fagot said. The numbers were the most recent available, although Fagot noted that more storm-damaged drilling sites had come back into service in the last two months.
“I’m sure those numbers have gone down, but it got to the point where we didn’t feel it was necessary for the companies to continue reporting“ their progress in repairing shut-in wells, she said.
Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast August 29, killing more than 1,500 people and devastating New Orleans and large swaths of its coast. Hurricane Rita made landfall on September 24 after ripping through the western gulf oil fields.
The twin storms destroyed or heavily damaged 165 offshore platforms and shut down a significant amount of domestic oil and gas production.
The Gulf of Mexico yields about 1.5 million barrels of oil per day, or 25 percent to 30 percent of the nation’s overall production.
Many of the platforms damaged or destroyed last year, which are a fraction of the more than 4,000 offshore platforms in the gulf, will not come back into service, said Michael Kearns, a spokesperson for the National Ocean Industries Association.
Many were built before 1988, when the federal government introduced more stringent construction guidelines, or were located in low-producing tracts.
“We’re probably at a point where the things that could be fixed have been fixed,“ Kearns said, adding that any improvement in the numbers will likely come from new production.
Some large, deep-water platforms were shut down by the storms, however, most notably Shell Oil Co.’s Mars platform. Mars resumed partial service in May, and is now producing 145,000 barrels of oil and 155 million cubic feet of gas per day, a 10 percent increase above prior production rates, according to a company statement.
Nearly all gulf oil refineries that were affected by last year’s storms are “running at or near capacity,“ said Cindy Gordon, refining issues manager with the American Petroleum Institute.
Lessons learned during the 2005 hurricane season have left refineries better equipped to handle disruptions such as the power outages and communication problems that affected production last year, she said.
“I think they’ve taken a good look at pre-positioning supplies and updating and evaluating their emergency response plans,“ Gordon said.
Even though oil production has remained relatively stable for some time, several factors have converged to make the current market volatile, including the partial shutdown of BP Exploration Alaska, Inc.’s Prudhoe Bay production, continued violence in the Middle East and fresh memories of last year’s deadly hurricane season.
In such an environment, even a dip of one or two percentage points in production can have larger reverberations in the market, said Fadel Gheit, an oil and gas industry analyst at Oppenheim and Co.
“When you have a tight situation, everything counts,“ he said.

Many leading auto manufacturers are working to introduce the fuelcell concept as the alternative prime mover.
The ’fuel cell’ is likely to reach a breakthrough in less than ten years and emerge as the major energy source, not only in automobiles but in many areas of daily life.
In the past 20 years, research work has been vigorously pursued in several advanced countries to develop an engine that can produce energy and, at the same time, satisfy the primary requirements such as environmental friendliness, independence from fossil fuels and ease of mass production to make the product competitive with other types of power-producing equipment.
The automobile industry, in particular, has been carrying on rather alone, until recently, in spearheading a dedicated quest in this direction. This effort has resulted in the production of electrical cars and models with hybrid engines, though only with limited commercial success.
The most promising find, however, is the ’fuelcell’, which, according to major research groups in the US, is likely to reach a breakthrough in less than ten years and emerge as the major energy source, not only in automobiles but in many areas of daily life.
The present status of high cost of production and operation with fuel cells has to change and, hence, projects on hand are aimed at slicing down the price to a tenth of the prototype version, fuelcellsworks.com said.
What is a fuel cell? Like any electrical battery, the fuelcell is of modular construction with sandwiched layers of electrodes and electrolyte.
The more common types of electrolyte membranes are of solid oxide but a selection of alkali, phosphoric acid, or molten carbonate may also find use in different builds. An electrochemical process sets in when an interaction occurs in the close package, thereby generating electricity.
The by-products of the reaction--water and carbon-dioxide--are suitably cleared. An anode and a cathhode in the module together with an external circuit form the complete system for the electrical flow.
It is claimed that the efficiency in power conversion in the case of a fuel cell is as high as 60 percent, whereas it is a mere 20 percent in an internal combustion engine. Clean power, noiseless functioning, absence of moving parts and earth friendliness elevate the fuel cell to a higher level of acceptance than other conventional energy-producing devices.
Applications Beginning with the adoption in spacecraft and soon seized for pilot schemes in cars and trucks, the new energy system is also under extensive testing in areas such as submarines, electronics, laptop computers, water treatment plants and portable power units.
Cars: Ford Motor Company, which turned 100 years on June 16, is poised to enter its second century in the field with big plans for hi-tech innovations in models, yet to come. By 2050, as officials of the automobile giant expect, nearly half of Ford versions will be powered by hydrogen fuel cells
Many more leading auto manufacturers are also working to introduce the fuel cell concept as the alternative prime mover.
Electronics: Small-size solid-state fuel cells with output as low as 3 KW will have ready application in portable electronics. Among the most versatile gadgets that can easily take to this revolutionary device are cell phones, laptops, tape recorders and video cameras.
Offices, hospitals and homes: Multiple sets built to provide outputs in higher ranges for meeting the heavy demands in offices, hospitals and entire residential blocks are mainly assemblies of fuel cell clusters.