Impact

The development of new ways to produce clean and affordable energy from water hyacinth not only solves a major environmental problem but represents an alternative supply chain to replace unsustainable use of firewood for cooking.  This in turn will result in a cleaner environment, improved health, employment opportunities and development of new sustainable routes for the production of bioenergy and biomaterials.

The benefits of utilising Water Hyacinth are clear with the development of viable conversion routes promoting jobs in harvesting and collection, improvements in infrastructure and fishing, the cleaning of water and reducing of disease. The discharge of untreated sewage pollutes rivers and water sources resulting in a critical environmental and health hazard. The treatment of waste water and conservation of water is therefore a priority (supporting UN sustainable development goal 6).

The reduction of fuelwood use will have major benefits to health by using clean burning biogas stoves. The development of new supply chains will generate new revenue streams and provide economic incentive. Added benefits may result from use of nutrients from digestate, potential use of water hyacinth as an animal feed and the future development of bio-refinery approaches for processing of water hyacinth into chemicals and bio-products.

The supply of biomass fuel is not being adequately managed and is rapidly becoming unsustainable. The ability to replace the use of woody biomass for cooking with biogas would create a seismic shift in both energy supply and health (supporting the UN sustainable development goals 3, 7, 11, 12 and 13) while offering advantages over other types of fuel. These include safer handling than flammable liquid fuels due to quick dissipation in case of accidental leakage, hard to steal and impossible to use as intoxicant. This is particularly a problem in Sub-Saharan Africa where in Uganda, for instance, 80% of cooking is done using either firewood or charcoal on simple poorly designed stoves.