Lake View from Town

Lake Victoria Circular Economy – Renewable Energy

The African continent has an enormous renewable energy potential which just began to be harnessed successfully. The adoption of innovative, affordable, and efficient renewable energy solutions will support Africa in achieving sustainable development growth and economic transformation.
Experience has shown that existing innovative solutions and technologies generated for developed markets need to be adapted and tailored to, the multi-faceted context of Africa. The goal is to bring not only economic but also environmental, social, and health benefits to the continent.
Our consortium has a solution to the ongoing water-energy-food nexus action, which would consider both urbanized and rural contexts in Africa, with the aim of answering 13 out of the 17 UN SDGs.

If you like to know more, please contact us.

Water Knowledge Europe 2021 – Spring Edition

Water Europe will host a series of free webinars that will offer you the chance to explore the openings offered.

Water Knowledge Europe Spring Edition will include:

  1. Water Knowledge Europe 2021 – The new Calls for Proposals of the Horizon Europe (HEU) R&I FP, DIGITAL EUROPE Programme, and LIFE 2021-2027 & Project Ideas Presentations – Tuesday, March 23
  2. Water Market Europe 2021– Digital Water and Cyber-security & MarketPlace – Presentations of market scenarios, challenges by Problem Owners and solutions from Technology Providers to foster the market outreach of innovations for a Water-Smart Europe – Wednesday, March 24
  3. Water Projects Europe 3rd edition – Water in the Circular Economy Policy development – Friday, March 26

https://buff.ly/3aB4tov

See also our EVENT Page.

Harvesting and Collection of Water Hyacinth

At Lake Victoria, on the Kenyan side in Homa Bay County, water hyacinth covers some 3200 hectares. The annual production of water hyacinth is 300,000 kg per hectare, wet weight. These numbers translate to 960,000 tons of water hyacinth per year or

  • 4,800 tons of water hyacinth to be harvested per day (assuming 200 working days per year).
    16 hectares of water hyacinth harvested per day
  • The water hyacinth harvesting technology is available mainly from China, Australia, and European SMEs. 

A review of the technology shows that the harvesters’ capacities depend on the harvesting boat’s speed (m/s), the width of the harvesting equipment (m), and the depth of harvesting.

Models like the water hyacinth harvesting machine DF-GC85 can harvest, cut, collect, store, and offload water hyacinth. The harvester uses sophisticated hydraulic technology. It consists of a collection arm, conveyor belt, and a mechanism for lifting the water hyacinth to transport boats or storage tanks. 

A harvester can handle 2.5 hectares per hour, and the harvest must be stored in barges and transported to the shore for storage near the processing plant. 

Let’s assume that the harvested water hyacinth has a moisture content of 94 %. The harvester is capable of reducing this to a moisture content of 75 %. This way, the production per hectares shrinks from 300,000 kg to 48,000 kg, and the output of the harvester above will be 120 tons per hour. Two barges with a capacity of 240 tons are needed to store the water hyacinth. Each should have the ability to process 240 tons; this means that after every 4 hours, they would pull the two barges to the shore.