The proposed waste-to-energy (WTE) plant will contribute 10MW to the nation's power grid – enough to power more than 10,000 South African homes.
In addition to providing a renewable energy resource, the waste management project will help address limited landfill availability by diverting up to 500 tons of municipal waste (MSW) per day from the landfill to the WTE plant, reducing the waste volume by 90%.
The facility will use both wet organic fraction to produce biogas and the dry fraction of locally available MSW in an effort to provide clean burning natural gas energy to the region.
The US Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) awarded MBHE African Power, a local renewable energy developer, a grant as joint developer in the public-private partnership that includes the Drakenstein Municipality and Interwaste, a local South African waste management company.
Black & Veatch will serve as owner’s engineers to provide fuel characterisation, front-end engineering and design (FEED), and tender support for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC), operations and maintenance contracts.
“Partnering with MBHE on this project will help address an increasingly critical waste management challenge facing the community. The completed project will address this issue while also providing a sustainable energy solution to meet growing electricity demand,” says Karen Daniel, chief financial officer and executive leader of Black & Veatch’s sub-Saharan Africa growth initiative.
The project supports Power Africa, a US government-led initiative to increase access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa by adding more than 30,000MW of cleaner, more efficient electricity generation capacity and 60m new home and business connections.
