south africa – Shanghai Metal Corporation

The West-African country of Senegal has recently begun the construction of a major solar farm in the sub-Saharan desert, it is a 20MW project located in Bokhol and is called ‘Senergy2’. The project is estimated to cost $28 million and is going to be developed by French renewable energy platform – Greenwish Partners, which dedicates much of its work to sub-Saharan projects. Senergy2 was also financially backed by the Senegalese state; with financial support from the UK and Norway through their joint investment vehicle Green Africa Power, according to local news
When completed and operating at full capacity, it’s predicted that 160’000 people will have access to clean power, a move that will drastically increase the countries chances of 20% renewables by 2017. “With no energy, there can be neither growth nor development. With the Bokhol facility, we are now able to take a new step and Senegal comes unreservedly into a new, clean energy period,” said President Macky Sall.

Senegal is eager to attain a position as one of the continent’s leading countries in renewable energy production, as well as positioning itself as the leader in West Africa; currently, South Africa and Morocco are the flagbearers for the continent.

As manufacturing plants are being under pressure to reduce their energy spending, many countries and companies are trying to make progress in innovating. some researchers from Germany and South Africa have proposed a technique to reduce the emission in metal processing factories. and will use South Africa’s large aluminium processing industry as a test bed.

In addition to powering electricity-generating turbines , the large mirrors can also melt metals thanks to their ability to concentrate solar rays. The process helps reducing carbon footprint of the metal processing industry.

The preliminary concept is going to be tested first in Germany at the Aerospace Centre’s (DLR) by the Institute of Solar Research in Julich before launching it in South Africa.

According to these researchers, solar mirrors would focus sun rays reaching 700°C to a rotary solar kiln which will be able to melt aluminum ore but also recycled aluminum objects. In addition the research team will develop a logistics plan to transport the molten aluminium from the central solar melting plant to the production facilities where liquid metal will be processed.

“The aim of the project is to develop an energy and cost effective method that can be implemented across a variety of system sizes, depending on the requirements,” said Martina Neises-von Puttkamer, project manager at DLR.

South Africa is a particularly interesting place to start the project because the country’s metal processing facilities rely mostly on electric energy coming from coal-fired power plants which brought them to become the 15th largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world. Also Metal processing is the country’s largest industry.

source: eandt.theiet.org

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