Richard Arwa

Richard Arwa (Kenya) - CEO CIST Africa

While ethanol is traditionally made by adding yeast to products like sorghum, barley and sugar cane, CIST Ethanol Fuel uses water hyacinth, a plant found in abundance in Lake Victoria.

Chemist and high school teacher Richard Arwa started producing ethanol with two high school students for a science and engineering fair. Later, another competition encouraged CIST Africa to commercialise the product, prompting then to scale their production significantly from the single litre they were able to produce at a time at the high school laboratory.

Unlike other materials used to produce ethanol, water hyacinth contains strong cellulose bonds. Richard manufactured an enzyme which breaks these bonds through fermentation, which takes place once the hyacinth has been cleaned and shredded. Laboratory tests found that CIST Ethanol has a low sulphur content and releases minimal emissions when burnt, making it safe for cooking.

Based on our innovation achievements, we have identified strategies and methods of controlling the excessive growth of water hyacinth in Lake Victoria while also utilizing the invasive plant in a beneficial way. We harvest water hyacinth from Lake Victoria to manufacture 1,500 litres per day of 95% hydrated ethanol, blended and stabilized as a household cooking fuel. The ethanol is sold locally as a fuel for cooking stoves and is proving to be cleaner, cheaper and more popular with domestic consumers than wood-fuel, charcoal and kerosene cooking fuels.

Up to 54 million trees will be saved over a 10-year period from households switching from charcoal to Ethanol Cooking Fuel. CIST ethanol fuel is burnt in single burner and double burner ethanol cook stoves. These are non-pressurized stoves that retain its liquid ethanol fuel in a manner that prevent spilling, leaking, fires and explosions. It is equipped with a refillable fuel canister containing permanent porous refractory mass that absorbs ethanol and make it available to the flame by capillary action.

Based on our cheaper sources of raw materials, CIST ethanol fuel is affordable at $ 1 per litre. The fuel has high calorific value of 4.99 Kcal/g hence cook fast by boiling one litre of water in 5 minutes. It is blended to burn slowly i.e. 1 litre burn continuously for 5 hours, emitting neither soot nor smell.

---

Website: https://www.kenyacic.org/2020/08/cist-east-africa-limited/

Facebook