JOIN USYou’ve heard of ‘green’ fuel. Now get ready for yellow as scientists have found a way to turn banana waste into a sustainable fuel source that could be relevant to many countries across Africa.
The simple, low-tech idea was developed by researchers at Nottingham University. They used banana skins to create briquettes that can be burned for cooking, lighting and heating.
It could alleviate the burden of gathering firewood, the dominant energy source in many parts of the continent. This would help reduce deforestation, which makes a significant contribution to global climate change.
In some African countries, like Rwanda, bananas are an important and versatile crop, used for food, wine and beer. But experts estimate that the edible fruit makes up just a small part of what the plant produces.
According to scientists, for every one tonne of bananas, there are an estimated 10 tonnes of waste, made up of skins, leaves and stems.
It was on a visit to Rwanda that Joel Chaney, a PhD student from the University of Nottingham came up with the idea of developing a low-tech approach to turn this banana waste into an efficient fuel source. Back in the laboratory at the university’s faculty of engineering, Joel showed how to make bananas burn.
He first mashes a pile of rotting skins and leaves. This pulp is then mixed with saw dust, compressed and dried to create briquettes that ignite readily and throw out a steady heat, ideal for cooking.
“The banana skins bind other materials together really well, they act like glue,” says Chaney. “We can then either form the material into a ball by hand, or use a press to squeeze the materials together and squeeze the liquid out.”
Easy and economical
“Once we’ve pressed them we can lay the briquettes outside in the sun, and within about two weeks we have some dried fuel.”
The emphasis of the project has been on developing a simple technology that can be used in developing countries without the need for a large financial outlay.
Over the years there have been many attempts to develop new stoves and fuel sources in Africa that have failed because they were too expensive or did not take on board local needs.
Standing around a stove in the laboratory that’s using banana briquettes to boil water, Mike Clifford, associate professor in engineering, says he is really pleased with the project.
“This is working really well. These briquettes we’ve made by hand, we haven’t used any mechanical equipment at all. No technology and we’ve had a really good result,” he says.
“We’re starting from very basic problems and we are making the solutions as simple and accessible as possible to the people that need them,” he adds.