Biofuels Production In Northern Nigeria

By

I M Bugaje

idribuga@twr.ac.za

The collapse of General Obasanjo’s National Political Reform Conference (NPRC) had been predicted by many commentators. This was because the conference was not only unbalanced in terms of representation but was basically being engineered to satisfy the President’s agenda. Somehow, along the way it went out of his control. What ever the contentious issues that led to this is now history. What is more important for us now is to look and reflect on some of the issues raised and see in which ways we can meet up to the challenges facing us, especially those of us who live North of the river Niger. The so-called “resource control” was indeed a major issue raised at the NPRC and could resurface in one way or another in the near future. It is one of the premise on which the US has predicted the collapse of the Nigerian nation state by 2020. What ever happens by 2020 or before that, the North must start planning its future with out the Niger Delta oil.

While agriculture has been the mainstay of the nation, contributing more than any other sector to our GDP since independence, crude oil has been, on the other hand, Nigeria’s major foreign exchange earner especially in the past 3 to 4 decades. The North has been threatened at the failed NPRC with eminent fuel shortage once those clamouring for resource control decide one day to close down the pipelines that deliver crude oil to Kaduna Refinery. It is therefore time for us to start looking into the alternatives available to us especially in the production of alternative fuel for the transport sector. As for electricity generation, hydro-power is still the cheapest means of electricity generation and our hydro-electricity potentials are very high with so many inland rivers and dams in the North. As for the transportation sector, it consumes fuel in two major ways; as petrol (or gasoline) for most small capacity vehicles and as diesel for most of the heavy duty vehicles. It is now well established that agriculture can provide us bio-fuels that can be used as substitute for both petrol and diesel. The technology has been developed in many countries, including some developing countries such as Brazil, India and South Africa.

The substitute for petrol is bio-methanol/ethanol. Diesel can be substituted with non-edible vegetable oil, after some treatment and refining. In any case, the first ever diesel engine was run with groundnut oil by Rudolf Diesel in 1893. The conventional petrol/diesel engines of the vehicles we have today would not require any major modification to use these alternative bio-fuels. It is therefore time the Northern states private sector and governments started investing into agricultural/energy plantations in the North for the production of these alternative bio-fuels. Interestingly, our various agricultural waste products, such as corn stalk and comb, millet stalk, rice straw, etc can all be processed to produce bio-ethanol. This would therefore not create unfavourable competition with the production of food cereals so that the cost of food does not go beyond the reach of the common man. As for the non-edible oils, they are not in any case part of our food menu and most of their seeds are rotting away in many rural areas of Northern Nigeria.

A study carried out in India in 2001 on Mahua oil has shown that this non-edible oil can be a better substitute for diesel in internal combustion engines. The Mahua tree, which is fast growing, can also grow very well in Northern Nigeria due to the similarity in its ecology in India and what we have in the North. Other species of interest include pongam, jatropha (wild castor) and buffalo gourd (a kind of wild melon) whose seeds contain oils of about 30 to 40%. This year, due to the glut in maize production world wide created by the unjustified subsidy western countries are providing to their agriculture, the world prices of locally produced maize in South Africa was not favourable enough for export (with a strong Rand in the background). As a result, a large proportion of South African maize was diverted to bio-ethanol production to be used as fuel as this was more cost effective. Use of cereals (mainly starch) to produce ethanol has an advantage over the use of corn stalks, as the process would only involve fermentation and no hydrolysis would be necessary to convert stalk into starch. With the prices of crude on the rise, some predicting a three digit dollar figure per barrel of crude oil in the very near future, the South African experiment makes economic sense.

Bio-fuels are not only a renewable and sustainable energy resource but are toxic-free, unlike the conventional petroleum based fuels. Bio-fuels are also bio-degradable and their use helps reduce the emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The Kyoto agreement, sponsored by the United Nations, has set the limit of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emission into the atmosphere in order to stem the ever increasing tide of global warming, weather disruptions, and the Al-Niño and La-Nina effects. All countries of the world have signed the agreement except the arrogant USA, whose CO₂ emission on per capita basis is over 20 times that of most developing countries. Bio-fuels help in reducing the CO₂ accumulation in the atmosphere because the very process by which plants make their food for growth is photosynthesis which consumes atmospheric CO₂ in the presence of solar energy (sun shine). Even though CO₂ would be discharged into the atmosphere when the fuels are used in vehicles or for other heating purposes, since some of the plant materials (roots, etc) are still left un-used, the net effect is an overall CO₂ reduction in the atmosphere. The other major advantage of bio-fuels is that their use does not lead to emission of sulphur compounds into the atmosphere, unlike petroleum products. Sulphur compounds are not only a health hazard to humans, but they also create “acid rain” in some areas of the world.

The development of bio-fuels in the Northern States would also lead to job creation in the production, harvesting and processing of these energy materials. Existing fuel distribution network can be used to get them across the North. Brazil is a case study of how bio-fuels development has led to not only reduction in oil imports but several ethanol-based down stream chemical industries were established as a result. As at today, about 5 million vehicles in Brazil are using bio-ethanol while 9 million others are using a combination of ethanol and petrol. The United States itself is producing about 9000 MW of electricity (more than twice Nigeria’s installed NEPA capacity) from biomass. The proposal by Jigawa state to establish an Independent Power Production (IPP) Plant at Dutse was a welcomed development. Unfortunately, the state government wanted to use conventional diesel instead of biomass or solar energy. Large diesel engines and generators have already been imported with tax payers’ money and these equipment are wasting away in crates just outside Dutse.

An important consideration in the selection of energy crops for bio-fuels is ease of propagation, short life cycle, survival under adverse conditions, high yield potential (tones per hectare per year), etc. A number of plants come to mind in this regard. For the purpose of bio-diesel, plant species already developed in India and Brazil should be looked into for adoption in Northern Nigeria. We should also consider vegetable oils to be produced from seeds of Faru, Dunya, Cediya, etc. These plant species are available in the wild and not much research has been done into their economic utilization. For Bio-methanol and bio-ethanol, we should fall back to our vast corn stalks, millet stalks, etc so that through the process of hydrolysis and fermentation, we could convert them into methanol and ethanol. We need to also revive our sugar industries (at Numan, Bachita, etc, all of them killed by the sugar imports of the Dangotes) so that the bagasse and molasses can also be converted into bio-fuels. In fact in Brazil, the sugar industries are the greatest contributors to bio-ethanol production. This also subsidizes the cost of sugar production, making the Brazilian sugar one of the cheapest in the world and allowing it to flood the world market (including Nigeria). The North can economically become the Brazil of West Africa if our political leaders can take the bull by the horn and invest in the development of these vast resources to make us self sufficient and allow us say, with a loud voice, “to hell with Niger Delta oil!”