Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:01 Hello, I am Teresa Smith, and today I speak to Simon Ego Forer about the company pyro Genesises. Simon is the c e o and co-founder of Pyro Genesises and the co-inventor of the concept pyro, which is the waste to energy containerized technology that simultaneously converts agricultural waste to renewable electricity while processing heat and biofuels.
Speaker 2 00:00:35 Welcome to the E ESI Africa Podcast, brought to you by your trusted power and energy multimedia journal. You can download this and all other episodes on esi hyphen africa.com/podcasts. Let's get into today's conversation.
Speaker 0 00:00:55 Hello Simon. Welcome to the ESI Africa Podcast.
Speaker 3 00:00:59 Hi, Teresa.
Speaker 0 00:01:01 Okay, so you are, uh, the c e o of pathogenesis, which, if I understand correctly, is a bioenergy, biomass and biofuels technology developer and service provider. So you use a containerized waste to energy technology that uses lysis to convert agricultural and food processing waste to renewable electricity process heat, and solid and liquid biofuels. So let's just go right back to the beginning. Pyrolysis, it doesn't mean simply burning waste. So could you please explain what that concept of pyrolysis is, because that is what sets your company apart from any other biofuels company?
Speaker 3 00:01:47 Certainly. Thank you very much, Teresa. So pyrolysis is an advanced thermal technology. It heats combustible materials to between five to 700 degrees Celsius in a reactor where there is no air present. And that's really important because without oxygen or air, that material cannot burn. So in the name pyrolysis pyrolysis, pyro means fire or heat, and lysis means to separate. Another example you may have heard of is hydrolysis. Hydrolysis meaning water separation, which when you've got sugar in a glass of water, hydrolysis separates it into a solution. So our patented troche technology, it separates combustible materials into a hydrocarbon vapor and a highly porous solid carbon, which is called biochar. So what pathogenesis does with our patented, uh, pyro chemie technology is we use the hydrocarbon vapors that it produces in the following ways. We use those vapors as a fuel to generate renewable electricity and heat. Okay. Alternatively, we can condense those vapors to produce a hydrocarbon liquid called bio oil or pyrolysis oil, which we've developed a method for upgrading that to renewable liquid biofuels. And those biofuels typically are renewable kerosene for use in Jet A one or cooking stoves, uh, and diesel, cuz they're all hydrocarbon chain molecules
Speaker 0 00:03:32 And you're just upcycling them. Um,
Speaker 3 00:03:35 Yes. So we're upcycling the hydrocarbons in the waste, um, to these much more useful, um, products, uh, with the highly porous, um, solid biochar that's solid carbon. Uh, we infuse that with nutrients and that makes a really good bio fertilizer, which we've trademarked with a name nutrient char. Okay. So when, uh, we can then, so from the farmers, uh, collecting the waste from the farmers, we can then convert that back into this bio fertilizer, which we can then sell back to them. And when they apply Nutra chart to their soil, it, um, re that effectively. Uh, well, first of all, it increases the soil carbon content, which makes the soil much more fertile because organic carbon content in the soil, um, if it becomes depleted, the soils become in fertile. So when you're just using chemical fertilizers, which don't have any carbon in them, and then you are removing the carbon that the plants are produced, you are stripping the carbon out in that soil. So over time they become infertile. And that's what happened in America in a dust bowl in the thirties, and it couldn't be grow anything.
Speaker 0 00:04:44 Okay. Um, it sounds like, I'm sorry, but this is a very South African thing. I'm just thinking Nuri bullet, which is, uh, um, little machine use Oh, yeah. To, um, mix up your I
Speaker 3 00:04:54 Know the ones make
Speaker 0 00:04:55 Smoothies. Yes. Yeah, the smoothies. Oh, yeah. Smoothies are about, you know, replenishing all the things that your body's wasting, um, missing. So yeah, you're, you're kinda doing the
Speaker 3 00:05:05 Same thing. Why are you've throwing that stuff away? Yeah, exactly. You know, this is good. You shouldn't be throwing it away. You should be retaining it and, and consuming it. So yeah, we're putting all the good stuff, the, the carbon back into the, uh, soil. And when you put carbon back into the soil, um, you've effectively broken the carbon cycle because the plants have a role to play in this process. So, plants fantastic. Much more efficient than anything that human beings have developed for removing carbon dioxide from air. They suck it into their, uh, leaves, uh, with nutrients and sunlight and water. They convert it into carbohydrates, which we typically eat. And so, um, when these carbohydrates, uh, degrade, you know, either the plant dies in rots or we've eaten it and it degrades, you know, um, that then converts back into carbon dioxide, or even worse still methane, which is 25 times more polluting than carbon dioxide for greenhouse gases.
Speaker 3 00:06:03 Um, so it just keeps on going round and round. Um, but what we do is that we say, uh, hold on a second. We're gonna heat up this material, we're gonna convert it into this, uh, solid porous, uh, carbon, and then the farmers are gonna put that in this soil. And, you know, if you dig up coal, it's been there for millions of years. Okay. So the experts, um, all agree that biochar, when put, when sequestered when carbon is sequestered into soil in the form of biochar, it's gonna re, it's gonna remove carbon from the environment for at least a hundred years, if not over a thousand. So that's carbon removal. And we only stumbled across this, uh, you know, within the last kind of like, year to 18 months that actually our technology's perfect for this. Okay. And as a carbon removal system that's eligible for carbon credits,
Speaker 0 00:06:52 So
Speaker 3 00:06:52 Farmers can now become carbon farmers. So African farmers can now solve the global climate change crisis by converting their waste through sis into carbon, which we cannot upgrade into a bio fertilizer, which they can then produce their own fertilizers locally rather than sending their hard-earned foreign exchange back to the west. Uh, we can produce our own, uh, bio fertilizers in Africa, you know, from our own waste, and then put that into the soil. And the west can now buy our carbon credits.
Speaker 0 00:07:25 Okay. Setting up the ultimate sustainable little circle.
Speaker 3 00:07:29 Yep. The circle economy that's nuture for you. So in our opinion, in our humble opinion, Theresa Burning, any combustible material is a waste of a valuable resource, which our patented pyro, chemmy technology could convert into higher value products. And, uh, you know, uh, uh, a case for fighting climate change.
Speaker 0 00:07:50 Okay. So now what is the actual physical size of the system that you're talking about? When you say containerized, do you mean in the sense of the thing is in a contained shawl, or do you mean it is the size of a PX container that goes on the back of a track?
Speaker 3 00:08:06 Okay. I, I know them as iso shipping containers. If you visit our, um, process page on our website, uh, you'll see a photograph of our pilot Pyrosis system, which is housed in a 20 foot by ASO shipping container. I will send you an image of that so you can share it with, uh, your listeners, uh, so that they can see it on your website. Um, containerization makes, uh, pyro chemmy unit modular and easy to transport on the back of the truck or a ship. Okay. And it's meant to be like that. Um, that containerized design enables rapid deployment of our pyro chimi system anywhere in the world, um, where a truck carrying a shipping container can go. So as long as the road is good enough, we can get to your village. We should be able to carry one of these systems and plug it down there, and it'll be ready to convert your underutilized farming waste into the electricity that you never had because there was no grid coming to your community anytime soon. Um, however, our commercial pirate heavy systems are going to be bigger than the 20 foot container you see in, um, on the website. And they'll be housed, uh, they'll be more powerful, um, uh, you know, uh, generating at least a hundred kilowatts, uh, up to a half megawatt, and they'll be housed in a 40 foot shipping container.
Speaker 0 00:09:27 Okay. So, so
Speaker 3 00:09:29 Still on the back of a truck,
Speaker 0 00:09:30 The, the one that's on the back of a truck, um, in terms of if that's something that can actually produce electricity, how much electricity are we talking about? Um, in a day? In a week. In a year?
Speaker 3 00:09:42 Yeah. So the starting, uh, size for the commercial units is a hundred kilowatts. Um, so, um, typically to put that into scale, uh, I know in, in, um, Nigeria for instance, they consume about 140 kilowatt hours per year. Okay. Per person. So that's the per capita energy consumption. Places like Uganda, it's only like 50 to 60 kilowatt hours per person per year. Um, so a hundred kilowatts running 24 hours a days, 2,400 kilowatts. Okay. So if one person on average in Nigeria consumes 140 kilowatt hours per year, and we're producing two and a half thousand kilowatt hours in a day, you could power an entire village of about 5,000 Nigerians using one of our systems. In South Africa, you have much higher, um, per capita think it's about two and half thousand kilowatt hours per per person. So one, one South African would use a
Speaker 0 00:10:44 <laugh> one,
Speaker 3 00:10:47 One of us, all the electricity that our system produces in a day could keep one South African going for a whole year.
Speaker 0 00:10:55 Still an interesting number. So that when it, when it comes to, um, a biomass, um, company, any company that uses biomass feed stock is really important. So what kinds of feed stock can yo tick handle? And then is it only electricity production? Because I, I, I would think, um, actual heat being the first thing that you make, that could be something that could be used as well. So what's the feed stock and what is the thing that c that can then be pushed out?
Speaker 3 00:11:28 Right. So the feed stock is anything that burns and anything that burns is typically a hydrocarbon. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and we like, uh, we prefer, um, you know, our focus has always been on, um, energy access, uh, for rural communities especially, but also for admin processors, which typically need to be located in rural areas because they need access to lots of raw material grown by those rural, small holding, uh, farming communities. So if it burns, uh, we can prioritize it. Um, that includes in say, like urban areas, you know, you've got, uh, the organic fraction of, uh, municipal waste, for instance. So my co-founder, if you Google him, Dr. Joseph Beckey has done a lot of, uh, published, you know, peer reviewed, uh, articles in eminent journals, uh, on how to, you know, sort and, uh, you know, treat and then prioritize the organic fraction of municipal wastes.
Speaker 3 00:12:29 Um, now when a waste contains chlorinated compounds that can create problems, uh, which we can resolve because the chlorine in that waste, uh, when you heat it up in our process, can produce hydrochloric acid. And that can typically eat through steel. You can have certain steel alloys that are more resistant to acid, acidic or corrosive environments. That's one way you can blend the material. So it's got less, the, the concentration is lower and it's not such a problem. So there's a number of different ways we can deal with problematic wastes, but anything that burns typically including plastic, of course plastic is a very, um, clean uniform hydrocarbon. So, you know, if it doesn't have chlorine in it, yeah, we can blend it together with agricultural waste and, uh, you know, and then the, the fuel that it generates for us, those vapors, uh, so we can either just, uh, yes, the first thing that we can do easily is just combust that produce heat.
Speaker 3 00:13:30 So this is where aggregate processors, for instance, uh, in Nigeria, you've got a cassava, um, flour mills or cassava starch mill or oil pump, uh, producing mill. They need a lot of heat for their process and they produce a lot of the waste that our system can convert into that heat. And they typically also use quite a lot of electricity. So then yes, we would generate electricity as well if there's a surplus waste. Um, so say like you are an off grid community and you don't have any industry or anything that's, um, you know, nearby, uh, it would make more sense for you to generate the electricity that your community needs. And then the surplus waste that you've got, our system would then produce the vapor, which we can condense into that bio oil I was telling you about, upgrade that bio oil to kerosene and diesel, renewable kerosene and diesel.
Speaker 3 00:14:22 And now you've just produced a commodity. So you've added value to your underutilized waste. And you can now become an exporter of biofuels as a rural community. And this term we have coined for that is room industrialization. It means now small holder farming communities who didn't have anything to do with their waste apart from leave it to rot or burn it. Uh, but they've gotta clear it off their fields, otherwise it attracts, um, you know, parasites and pathogens which decimate their next season's crop. So they have to clear it off the fields and get rid of it somehow safely. So our system definitely would provide that. And then it would also give them now a commodity that can be exported. And then at the same time they're producing this, um, biochar, which as I said, we can infuse with nutrients. And it's a bio fertilizer, which when they brought back into their soil bingo, we've got carbon removal.
Speaker 3 00:15:15 And now, um, you know, things like Cop 26 and COP 27 have made big commitments to carbon removal technologies. Uh, there's a lot of people, I think they pledged 164 trillion to pay for climate change mitigation. So these committees can now get a slice of that very big pie and say, come and finance our, you know, en energy access, um, bio fertilizer production and our commodity production, uh, rural industrialization infrastructure please. And because we're gonna use the carbon credits generated from putting carbon back into our soils, um, as carbon removal that generates carbon credits. So we can now start structuring projects that bring all of that circular economy together to actually invest in these rural communities where nobody previously would've looking at investing in them. Cause first of all, they don't even have a credit rating, but once they start buying electricity, guess what? Good developer credit rating.
Speaker 0 00:16:13 So when you were talking about part of your excess could be converted into a bio eliquid that could then be upcycled into the kerosene or the diesel, are you talking also about being able to, or what gets used in clean cooking stoves, those kind of bio liquids, creating those liquids, um, as well?
Speaker 3 00:16:34 That's right, Theresa. Yeah. Um, you know, the kerosene, the renewable kerosene that we produce, um, kerosene stoves, um, there's no adaptation that's recording a standard kerosene cooking stove that, uh, kerosene stove into something that's using a renewable fuel at least. Um, the, uh, clean cooking stoves normally are based on the way they combust the fuel, uh, as a clinical and stove design. So, uh, um, the ideal fuel that could be used for that is the biochar. Yeah. Because the biochar, um, is, uh, you know, effectively you have removed the smoke from the charcoal in our process. So it now becomes a smokeless charcoal, which if you combine a smokeless charcoal with a clean cooking stove design, you have the ultimate clean cooking, um, situation, which will probably, uh, in, you know, increase the number of carbon credits that clean cooking stoves, um, can earn because you're now also using a sustainable and, uh, underutilized waste rather than using firewood, um, as your initial, uh, fuel. Yeah. So clean cooking stoves are normally because they're more efficient, you use less firewood, therefore you know, you're creating less of an impact. But if you're using a complete waste as your fuel and it doesn't produce smoke, cause our processes remove the smoke, then that really is a much cleaner process than whatever fuel you would be burning in your clean cooking stove in a much more efficient way.
Speaker 0 00:18:01 So you are working in four different, um, locations on four different kinds of pilot projects. Uh, which places are you working in? That's
Speaker 3 00:18:10 Correct. So Nigeria is our primary market initially, and the reason, uh, you know, we're working in Nigeria is, um, I mean, uh, my father is from Nigeria, so I'm Jill Heritage. Um, my mother's from Scotland. Uh, so it made a lot of sense. My co-founder, Dr. Joseph Heke, he's also of Nigerian heritage. Uh, we both educated in the UK and uh, Aston University. That's where we met. And you know, for us we intuitive Nigeria is facing concerning energy access. We had networks, we had an understanding of how to, you know, try and get in there what type of problems to solve using our technology. So, um, you know, it made sense. Um, I'd love to come to South Africa, you know, once, uh, you know, the company's developed sufficient traction, um, you know, so that we've got the resources to now, um, branch out and that's, you know, like on our top three of where to go next.
Speaker 0 00:19:06 I want to ask you about the other three places, but I want to point out in South Africa, I think your tech would really work very well on a municipal level actually. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, because, um,
Speaker 3 00:19:17 So sorting municipal waste.
Speaker 0 00:19:19 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, we've got this, um, law coming in, um, faster now in the Western Cape by 2025. Uh, but it's gonna be, um, introduced across South Africa eventually as well. Right now we will not be able to put organic waste into landfills from 2025. So what we gonna do with it and then I think is something that your technology would actually solve.
Speaker 3 00:19:46 Okay. Yeah. So the organic fraction of that municipal waste that goes into landfill, pardon me, typically, um, con is converted by the microorganism who are decomposing that organic waste into greenhouse gases like methane, which are 25 times more potent than regards into the organic fraction. Um, and have been materials or rave construction. Um, and you can't do anything with it. Then you'd send that to landfill. So this is the, you know, I mentioned earlier about my, uh, co-founder Dr. Joseph EY in those, uh, peer articles that he's published. Those are some of the issues that he actually grapples with in those articles because you have to have a commercially viable and efficient separation technology, uh, that handles that waste separating into its different, um, fractions. And then the organic fraction would then be yes, what you could ideally send to Pyrosis for upgrading that the economy can then utilize them. You can build whole value chains on back
Speaker 0 00:20:42 Of that. Yeah. I think that they definitely is a conversation to be had around that.
Speaker 3 00:20:47 Yeah. So this is why SIS is an amazing technology here. Everybody's saying, you know, well, how come it hasn't arrived yet? It actually has, if you see people using a vape, that's actually a mini pyrosis reactor.
Speaker 0 00:21:01 Okay. So you're getting tiny one around with you.
Speaker 3 00:21:05 Not that I'm promoting vaping, by the way. Please don't track kids. Yeah. The tech is actually sis, sorry, that has to be used in that way.
Speaker 0 00:21:15 So it's Nigeria the one where the other three places you are already working in,
Speaker 3 00:21:22 Um, we've had projects, well that we've already delivered in Ethiopia, um, very large population, uh, real requirement for energy access, a lot of agricultural production that could definitely benefit from this type of waste. Um, and then we also ran a project in Sierra Leone and Liberia, and this was both, both of those projects we ran during Covid. So, um, you know, we had a project that was in Nigeria that kind of, you know, was just coming to an end as Covid was hitting those two we had to run during Covid. And what was great was that we had really good in-country partners that helped us to deliver on the ground in those countries. Um, so that allowed us to evaluate the market and the application and where would be best placed, uh, in those countries. And the scale of the market as well. We haven't been able to really get back there yet.
Speaker 3 00:22:13 Um, and we haven't had any projects yet in South Africa. We'd love to love to do that. So places like, yeah, South Africa, Kenya. Um, but we have had announced, uh, two new projects. One in the one that was talking about that's gonna start up in Nigeria in the new year. And another one, interestingly enough in Indonesia and Indonesia is quite, um, similar in certain ways to, um, sub-Saharan Africa in that I think it has about 14,000 islands, only about 5,000, which are inhabited. But some of those islands are so remote that the price of diesel in those locations is like $12 a liter and they generate electricity using diesel generators. So you can imagine. Yeah. And they grow a lot of rice. I think it's the second world's second largest producer of rice. So, um, our project, they'll be looking at using their waste rice straw, which is a real problem because they tend to burn it and then it causes this re you know, real pollution. Um, and so, you know, converting that rice straw waste into renewable electricity and displacing diesel gen sets is the whole idea of that project. So, you know, it has a lot of similarities with, um, sub-Saharan Africa.
Speaker 0 00:23:23 Okay.
Speaker 3 00:23:23 In terms of the agricultural communities.
Speaker 0 00:23:25 Yeah. So I've seen, um, many grids mentioned in relation to electricity, um, that could be generated from your, um, technology. So are we talking a mini grid in some far, far flung place? So basically it's an off-grid system, or would it be tied into a, a grid?
Speaker 3 00:23:47 Um, you can have both. Ok. Uh, cause you know, what we're doing is power generation, um, <laugh>, it's just how much headache and, you know, what's the business case at the end of the day? Ah, yeah, yeah. It, it always comes down to somebody's past other business case. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:24:01 Uh, and then the sizing, um, it's really about, well, how big is the containerized system then? And what can it produce? And that'll tell you then how much electricity could eventually come from it and how big or small the amount of Yeah. Energy is
Speaker 3 00:24:17 And how much waste is available. So, you know, typically to run a commercial scale system. Yeah. So going back to the feed stock, you know, six tons a day will give you like a a hundred kilowatt system.
Speaker 0 00:24:29 Six tons a day would give you a hundred kilowatts.
Speaker 3 00:24:32 Yeah. Kilowatts is the power output, and then the amount of energy that's generated is Yeah. That power. So a hundred kilowatts times one hour gives you a hundred kilowatt hours. Yeah. Yeah. So the day you're gonna get 2,400 kilowatts. Okay. And kilowatt hours is what we as electricity consumers typically pay for. And that's where one South African typically, you know, consumes in one year about 2,500 kilowatt. Yeah. So the consumption of a typical South African in one year is the amount of energy our system will provide in a single day.
Speaker 0 00:25:06 Okay. So some of the issues that face, um, the bioenergy industry, um, in Africa as a whole, it's, um, issues like technical deficiencies, it's, uh, the lack of adequate infrastructure, low economic budgets on the part of the potential offtaker or the potential maker of this energy. Um, and sadly a low biogas yield if you're really thinking about how much effort is going into this. So how are you through your system addressing these issues?
Speaker 3 00:25:42 Yeah, they're challenging, aren't they? So yeah, I think one thing that, uh, yeah, Nigerians have a reputation not just in Africa, but you know, worldwide and that reputation, it comes from, you know, um, the environment, uh, in Nigeria means you have to, everybody's got side job, everybody's got something else going. They don't have just one main job. And it's cuz these, the environment conditions people not to become too dependent on any one thing. So you have to find multiple ways of generating, you know, income to, to survive in a country like Nigeria. Uh, I've been conditioned by that, uh, ecosystem, if you like, you know, having grown up there for a while, worked there also. Um, and, um, so as a chemical engineer, uh, and my co-founder who's a, as I said also of Nigerian heritage, um, we understood that you don't just solve one problem.
Speaker 3 00:26:40 You don't just generate electricity and sell electricity because how much electricity is somebody in a rural community gonna use? Not enough to justify the capital expense of putting the infrastructure in there unless you've got 20 years to wait for the payback. Right. So how, what other ways can we generate income? And I've just been talking about biofuels thing, you know, to buy, coming into your business model, that's when you can find, okay, we have a commercially viable cause we've got off-takers for the electricity, we've got off takers for the heat, we've got off-takers for the fuel, we've got off-takers for the fertilizer and we've got off-takers for the carbon credits. So this five different income streams from just one venture. Yeah. And that's what makes Pyrosis technology really well suited to the situation that you're gonna find in most rural communities or even, you know, any country. And now even the uk which is, you know, companies, uh, registered in the UK and now that gas prices have gone through the roof and energy's becoming, you know, more expensive than it is in sub-Saharan Africa. So, um, it's funny, we got all our funding to create energy access in sub-Saharan Africa, and now the UK's begging us to come <laugh> and bring to the uk
Speaker 0 00:27:56 Like, hello, come
Speaker 3 00:27:57 Show us having multiple income streams. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. We need heat. We can't rely on gas because there's problems there. Um, yeah. If you are dependent on importing fuel, uh, to generate your energy, whether that be in heat or electricity, um, you know, this is one way of solving that problem. And then if you produce waste that is combustible. Um, and you know, if you, if you do agriculture, then you've got all the right things coming together to generate all those different kind of streams that a financier looks at and says, yeah, we can actually make money.
Speaker 0 00:28:29 Okay. Now, um, you, I heard about you through the Energy Catalyst program. So how have they been helping you Yeah. With your business development?
Speaker 3 00:28:39 Well, a catalyst, um, sorry. Being a chemical engineer, we use catalysts. Um, and a catalyst is something that you can add to a reaction that speeds up the reaction. So that reaction could take you easily a whole week to produce what you're after. And what you're after typically is something of great value, much higher value than the reagents and the materials that you're bringing together to, so you bring a material together with a reagent in a chemical reaction, it produces something of far higher value. Now in the oil industry, they learned this very well. So the petrochemical industry is based on catalysis. And so they were able to take crude oil and turn it all this myriad of products, which if you remove crude oil from the equation, the entire global economy would collapse because the clothes that you are wearing, the paints, the plastics, everything in your life wouldn't just, wouldn't exist.
Speaker 3 00:29:36 Yeah. Without these chemical reactions that produces products. So catalyst speeds up the process and also makes sure that it gives you what you actually want. Catalysts can be specific. So energy catalyst is speeding up the process of bringing these fantastic technologies to market. So our technology is in the process of being proven because we have received funding from the Energy Catalyst program. We can be, uh, renewable electricity. Another one is testing the renewable heat. Another project is testing the renewable fuels. Yeah. Uh, another one is testing the bio fertilizers. They have to have a specific focus. And then it also invests in innovative business models and it also invests in building value chains. So in each of these projects, we are building a value chain. We're creating and demonstrating that there is an ecosystem that is commercially viable because the financers in this world who have this wall of money, and it really is a wall of money.
Speaker 3 00:30:35 There's trillions of dollars waiting to be invested If they can find bankable projects, but they need a bankable project needs something that's proven, uh, they can see, yeah, we've seen this, uh, technology work, it's great. You know, it keeps running. It doesn't break down. And uh, the people who are running it know what they're doing. You know, if we put our money there, we're gonna get profits back to, you know, x plus whatever percent. Um, so Energy Catalyst helps, you know, provide the resources that creates the ecosystem that demonstrates that to the world. And, um, so then technologies like ours and, you know, technology developers like us that are trying to bring these, uh, solutions to market now have the support that we need to showcase. Yeah. You know, it works, you know, it, it's, here's an example. Cause that's the first thing they'll ask you when you're going to ask them for money for a loan or finance of any time.
Speaker 3 00:31:28 Um, can you show us a working example of this, please? You know, um, so now once we've got these projects up and running, we'll be able to say yes, come along to our demonstration site in, you know, uh, iden or in car or hopefully somewhere in South Africa in the future. So energy tech catalyst typically funds consortia, and those consortia are like a value chain that now has all the resources to play all their different parts. So in our, um, energy Catalyst, uh, round eight project, uh, uh, one of our partners is a cassava flour mill. They produce the waste, they need the heat, they need the electricity. So that's, uh, we have two projects, um, you know, based with them. One is producing, uh, the renewable, um, electricity, heat, and the other one is producing the biofuels. Yeah. So, um, in that consortium is also a hydrocarbon reseller who wants to biofuels because they distribute that to their, uh, retail outlets.
Speaker 3 00:32:28 Okay. Uh, there's also an, um, uh, uh, an agricultural, um, what, what do you call it? Uh, the service provider. So they, uh, uh, assist with cultivate all the agricultural inputs and all the mechanized agriculture to cultivate and then to harvest and then to collect the material that we then need, uh, to feed the system with. You know, you've got our manufacturing partner who helped us to build the system who's now helping us to, um, you know, upscale that to the commercial scale. We've got, um, Aston University who helped us to develop the method for upgrading the bio oil into the kerosene diesel. So you can see how this is an ecosystem and a value chain that's coming together, um, that is now being resourced to actually function as a value chain. Um, and then that is an excellent example of like, yeah, you can see the business model works and you can see the technology works.
Speaker 3 00:33:23 You can see the whole value chain working. So the next thing is that that's when the financiers get interesting and say, how many of these can you install in a year? <laugh>? Yeah. So, uh, if we put the, if we throw this much money at it, can you install, you know, X number of systems? And in that project, um, our ambition is that within three years we've evaluated a hundred installation sites. Um, so that we've done the business case at each site to see, you know, is there a business case at each location across a hundred locations? So that's also the market research element. Uh, one of our other partners I shouldn't miss out, is, um, you know, they are providing, uh, cashless payments. Even if you have a Featureless mobile phone, you know, just using SMX texts, you should be able to pay for your electricity so that if you're a consumer of electricity, you know, you can, you know, you can, you can access, you've got energy access you that you can pay for using your mobile phone.
Speaker 3 00:34:19 So that tells you about an excellent example of a new ecosystem. And that's what Energy Catalyst is really good at doing IT. Resources that, well, first of all, you go through a very competi competitive process. You're bidding against hundreds of other companies or, or teams rather. And, uh, the Energy Catalyst process evaluates all of these different teams and then selects the ones that they think have got the best chance of getting the technology working and then having a support mechanism that can bring that technology to market. So, I mean, hats, if it wasn't for Energy Catalyst, you know, we wouldn't be where we are now. Um, because it's very tough to get resources, uh, in a very risk averse environment, especially when investors and finances, what they want to see is a working system. They don't want to be part of the journey <laugh> to to, to f to find out if it doesn't, doesn't work <laugh>, but because it's taxpayers money, that Energy Catalyst uses the taxpayers saying, look, if this creates a new technology which comes to market, it's gonna create a whole new industry that's gonna generate massive amounts of economic growth.
Speaker 3 00:35:27 Uh, every, there's gonna be jobs locally, um, in, in the UK for building this machines, but there's also gonna be jobs for the people that we've gotta create in, uh, the places that we're gonna be operating. So in Sub-Saharan Africa, uh, if it was, uh, Nigeria or South Africa, I'm gonna recruit local people and train them how to operate this equipment and how to maintain it. Cause I'm not gonna fly people over from the UK Yeah. To do that. Okay. So now links our economies in a mutually beneficial way. Yeah. And, uh, this is now where we come into like, yes, we're talking about industrialization, we industrialize Africa, what do we need to industrialize Africa? We need access to reliable, affordable, renewable, sustainable energy, and we need the mechanisms to convert our primary, uh, raw materials into higher value products that we can then explore and people can pay us for an exchange for. Yeah. And that starts with our carbon credits. So just for converting our waste into the fertilizer that our farmers then put back into their own soil, it might not, it won't have moved more than two kilometers and we won't have had to ship it outta the country. We can generate, you know, income in a form of dollars, euro, rose, or pounds. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:36:38 Mm-hmm. Okay. So
Speaker 3 00:36:41 Energy catalysts recognize that we are onto something. That's why they gave us all the money that they've done so far. We're gonna make very good use of it and, uh, hopefully make them proud and show that, you know, um, you know, we've got, uh, we think this is a great idea. Every country should be doing something like, uh, what the UK government is doing with Energy Catalyst for sure.
Speaker 0 00:36:59 So that, that's such a lovely explanation of what Energy Catalyst actually does. So let's leave it there. Thank you Simon, uh, for taking the time to explain what pathogenesis is and what lysis is, and I look forward to finding out what you guys do next.
Speaker 3 00:37:14 Thank you, therea. It's been a pleasure speaking with you, and thank you for having me on your show. Really appreciate it. And, you know, uh, really, uh, I think your listeners, uh, are blessed, uh, to be able to have access to, you know, this kind of information because Yeah. You know, when we started, very few people understood that there were technologies that were this powerful and solved so many problems simultaneously. So we need to get the word out. Um, you know, there is a solution, it's in the making, and we're just one. There are many others. Um, so hopefully we're gonna have a much better world to live in, uh, very soon.
Speaker 2 00:37:53 You have been listening to an e ESI Africa podcast. For the latest news reports and interviews on power, energy, and related industries, visit the ESI Africa website on esi hyphen africa.com or follow us on social media. Until next time, thank you for tuning in.
