Fuel switch from fossil fuel (coal) to renewable energy (biomass)

Letaba Estates is a large citrus farm near the town of Tzaneen in the Limpopo Province of South Africa. The farm grows, sells and exports fruit and fruit juice. The fruit juice is made onsite in a juicing plant that needs electricity and steam to operate. In the processing of citrus fruit most of the waste fruit peels are dried for cattle feed in peel driers fired by coal in adjacent combustion chambers and a portion of the peels is land-filled. Since 1961 when the plant opened, the steam requirement has been met from large coal-fired boilers installed onsite.

Tzaneen is also home to a thriving forestry industry and there are several sawmills around town. In addition to wood, large quantities of biomass waste is produced in the form of woodchips and sawdust. The sawdust produced by these sawmills seldom finds any useful large scale application and in several places has been disposed on what have become sizeable heaps (informal solid waste disposal sites).

The project will be done in three phases.  The projected dates at which each intervention will take place are approximate and the intention where possible is to deliver these interventions sooner rather than later.

Phase 1 commenced in September 2008. Work has started on replacing the peel presses in order to improve the peel press efficiency and on the conversion of the two peel driers to run on biomass in the form of sawdust/wood chips. The result will be a complete fuel switch in the peel driers and higher efficiency, leading to projected VERs of 4 647 ton CO2 per annum. As a conservative measure, given that the baseline is determined ex post and efficiency will improve (effectively expanding the capacity of the peel drier) the VERs will be capped at the equivalent of the highest amount of peels dried in the last seven years, being 3 991 ton, equating to 5 286 ton VERs per annum.