{"id":19783,"date":"2014-04-01T03:18:59","date_gmt":"2014-04-01T01:18:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=19783"},"modified":"2014-03-30T11:27:02","modified_gmt":"2014-03-30T09:27:02","slug":"soya-sorghum-promising-options-biofuels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/soya-sorghum-promising-options-biofuels\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa: Soya, Sorghum Most Promising Options for Biofuels"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Mercury — SOUTH AFRICA — March 27, 2014 — After nearly six years of studies, the Water Research Commission is expected to recommend sorghum and soybeans as the preferred crops to grow for “biofuels”.<\/p>\n

This follows a detailed evaluation of 20 crops with potential to be grown as biofuels and blended with conventional fuels to meet at least 2 percent of petrol and diesel demand as from October next year.<\/p>\n

Instructed and funded by the commission, the study is being done by the Centre of Water Resources Research at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and the University of Pretoria.<\/p>\n

The commission’s latest Water Wheel magazine<\/a> said the researchers evaluated trees and crops, including canola, cassava, Jatropha, sweet sorghum, soya bean, sugar beet and sunflowers. Sugar cane was left out as it had already been studied.<\/p>\n

Although the aim was to evaluate the impact on water resources, biofuels have also generated controversy because of the potential impact on food security and nature conservation if more land is turned over to growing “green” fuels.<\/p>\n

“Irrigated agriculture uses about 60 percent of the available surface water and groundwater resource, and irrigated cropping for biofuels will have to find its water from existing allocations, or compete for scarce new water resources,” the Water Wheel article said.<\/p>\n

Concern<\/p>\n

The Department of Water Affairs also voiced concern at the impact on water quality since growing biodiesel and bioethanol could cause erosion and siltation and increase the volume of fertiliser and pesticides contaminating water resources.<\/p>\n

An early version of the government’s National Biofuels Industrial Strategy said enough biofuels could be grown to meet 5 percent of the national petrol and diesel demand because, in most years, the country grew a crop surplus.<\/p>\n

Another 3 million hectares of “under-utilised” and high potential land in former homelands could also be used.<\/p>\n

This target had since been revised to a 2 percent penetration rate.<\/p>\n

During the commission’s |study, maize was eliminated because of concerns around food security, while Jatropha (an oil-rich plant species found mainly in the Americas) had raised concern because of its potential to become invasive.<\/p>\n

Although the final recommendations have not been made, the Water Wheel reported that sorghum and soybeans were found to be among the more promising options for biofuel production in dryland farming.
\nThe Mercury<\/p>\n

(c) 2014 Independent Newspapers (Pty) Limited. All rights strictly reserved. Provided by Syndigate.info, an Albawaba.com company<\/p>\n

Copyright notice<\/p>\n

This is a news service of NewsEdge Corporation \u00a92014. This content is for your personal use only, subject to Terms and Conditions. No redistribution allowed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Mercury — SOUTH AFRICA — March 27, 2014 — After nearly six years of studies, the Water Research Commission is expected to recommend sorghum and soybeans as the preferred crops to grow for “biofuels”. This follows a detailed evaluation of 20 crops with potential to be grown as biofuels and blended with conventional fuels […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[],"supplier":[353,6769,6770,6768],"class_list":["post-19783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","supplier-south-african-council-for-scientific-and-industrial-research-csir","supplier-university-kwazulu-natal","supplier-university-pretoria","supplier-water-research-commission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19783\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19783"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=19783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}