Blume Distillation and Thomro Investments to set up new biorefinery

Blume Distillation LLC, the leading provider of appropriate scale biorefinery liquid replacement fuel (LRF) production equipment, has announced the completion of a joint Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Thomro Investments Ltd. of Lusaka, Zambia. The agreement details a plan for the design, development and implementation of a Blume production solution that will convert waste and cultivated feedstock inputs into LRF and high value agricultural co-products including CO₂ and organic soil amendments.

The project, located in Chipili District in Luapula, Zambia, was conceived by Thomro CEO and Founder Professor Thomson Sinkala and leverages Blume’s proprietary advanced Agtech equipment to transform standard farm and native crops and associated production waste to a diverse range of high return end and co-products. “I have been focused on alternative solutions for a number of years,” said Professor Sinkala. “Zambia is in need of innovative technologies that can help us better utilise existing resources to develop energy programs that benefit communities all over the country with low cost, renewable and clean liquid replacement fuels. David Blume has been a pioneer in this technology for years and I am delighted to have teamed with his company for the purpose of building a biorefinery plant to help produce clean energy resources, expand local employment opportunities and to help reduce our dependence on toxic fossil fuels.”

Working with Thomro Investments, Blume has designed a plan that will help provide increased benefits from Thomro Cassava plantation interests in the Mansa district of Zambia. The project will provide significant local and regional fuel availability, in addition to energy, food, employment and environmental benefits.

“Teaming with Blume Distillation, Thomro will ultimately be able to cost- ffectively produce 9.463 million l/y, or 2.5 million gal./y, of LRF products for applications including clean indoor cooking, refrigeration, powering Ag and water pumps and producing micro grid electrical generation,” said David Blume, CEO of Blume Distillation. “Our initial Phase One implementation will include a 1MW electrical co-generation plant as a proof of the operation model.”

“With the rising recognition of the risks associated with continued fossil fuel use, including the economic and environmental impacts of their extraction, production and use, we are seeing an ever expanding interest in our world class waste to fuel solutions,” Blume continued. “Our economically produced liquid replacement fuels can satisfy the growing worldwide energy demand while reducing greenhouse gas emissions, producing abundant food, livestock feed, organic fertiliser and soil amendments, fibre based building materials, and non-exportable jobs.”

“We are engaged in a number of waste to fuel projects in the US, Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and other emerging markets,” said Tom Harvey, Vice President of Blume Distillation. “Working with our NGO partners such as Project Gaia we are demonstrating how life critical applications including clean indoor cooking and non-electrical generation can be efficiently powered by locally produced, low cost and renewable LRFs.”

According to Professor Sinkala, “The Blume systems incorporate unique technology and proven processes that convert surplus and underused carbohydrate, starch and sugar-rich resources to produce fuel as well as to generate high value byproducts. We can employ these byproducts immediately in the farm system or productise them for resale markets to help replace costly petrochemicals that comprise a large portion of farm management overheads. Additionally, we are quite interested in addressing the transport fuel market. To that end, Thomro is in discussions with the Industrial Development Corporation to partner on the project and we have already been granted preliminary support by Musika.”

Blume and Thomro will be featured in a private invitation presentation hosted at the US Consulate on Friday, 20 November 2015, and will be meeting with national political, business, financial and community leaders over the next several days, discussing the benefits of the project plan for local and national interests.

Blume and its sister not-for-profit company the International Institute for Ecological Agriculture are technology partners in the United Nations’ Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, and the Environmental Protection Agency’s Partnership for Clean Indoor Air (PCIA), and are helping solve one of the most pressing economic, social and environmental challenges of our time; the need for localised, renewable and clean energy.

Adapted from press release by Francesca Brindle

Read the article online at: https://www.hydrocarbonengineering.com/refining/25112015/lrf-refinery-to-be-built-in-zambia-by-blume-and-thomro-1806/