The farm where the biogas plant will be built is owned by Mr. Mofokeng. Most farmers in South Africa are white. Mr. Mofokeng is one of the few black farmers in the area. It is important to keep the Apartheid history and the fight for racial equality, which were only twenty years ago, in mind throughout the duration of the project. It is sensitive to this project because Mr. Mofokeng wants to improve the situation of black people in the society and the team consists of white students. During the project it is essential that the team has to show respect to the client.
Mr. Mofokeng obtained his doctorate in theology in the Netherlands. After his retirement he started a cattle farm and at the moment he owns 150 cows. With the manure of these cows Mr. Mofokeng has the ambition to produce biogas and electricity. This process would contribute to the green energy supply in South Africa. One year ago a team of two students, also from the TU Delft, made a start with this project by building a biogas digester just big enough to produce biogas from the manure of two cows. The scale of this biogas digester is not big enough to make the production of electricity profitable. Therefore the upscaling of the biogas digester will be addressed in this project plan.
At the moment a new group of students is present at the Chicken Chain Farm and this second group will be followed up by our project team. The second group has made a feasibility study about the future biogas plant of the farm. This included taking into account the potential for various types of biomass, composite products and suppliers. Furthermore, this project group would make a business plan and a design for the biogas plant.
However, it is questionable whether this business plan and design will be delivered on time. Therefore, it has been decided by our own project group to write a business plan for the situation after the construction of the installation and modify an existing approved design. This design can be owned by a company in South Africa which often produces a biogas plant or this design will be a design of the previous project group.
During our stay in South Africa we still have to keep one major roadblock in mind. Halfway December most institutions will be running a skeleton crew due to the summer holidays. This means that important contacts have to be approached in the first period, before 14th to be precise, of our stay. In addition, the universities can only be approached after the summer. Before then the teachers are busy with the exam period and subsequent summer holidays. Our internship must therefore be well planned in order to prevent that some parties will be missed.
The research we did so far to prepare for our stay in South Africa contains several skype interviews with both Mr. Mofokeng, Mrs. Mofokeng, and the current group. In addition, the mid-term report and other relevant literature is being read in preparation for the design phase, and a first draft of a business plan has been written based on known facts and assumptions.
Besides the fact that this project builds on the project from the previous group, we have to keep in mind the examples of all existing farms with a biogas plant. Near Heidelberg, another city in the province Gauteng, a biogas construction company is active. This company, BOTALA energy solutions, provides farmers in South Africa with biogas plants. To gain experience, there also will be some visits to farms that have worked with BOTALA in the period of our stay.