Converting Cocoa Bean Waste into Bio-Fuel for West African Villages

African farming communities presently with little or no access to grid power may stand a chance to profit from a new green technology that can produce electricity from unwanted cocoa pod husks.

Led by the University of Nottingham, the project aims to create a completely new bio-fuel industry that would also enhance the socio-economic stability of cocoa producers in rural Ghana.

Ghana is the second highest producer of cocoa in the world and every ton of cocoa beans harvested generates 10 tons of cocoa pod husks. In the past, this waste material was underutilized. However, feasibility studies indicate that cocoa pod husks could be converted into valuable bio-fuels; an important energy supply for rural areas that have only 15 percent electricity coverage at present. If successful, this new bio-energy infrastructure would support the Ghanaian government’s aim for universal access to electricity by 2030.

Jo Darkwa, Project’s Chief Investigator and Professor of Energy Storage Technologies, Faculty of Engineering, University of Nottingham.

The Implementation of Bio-Rural Energy Scheme (IBRES) project, supported by the UK Government’s Global Challenges Research Fund, aims to create practical and economic use of the cast-off cocoa pod husks.

Besides energy production and distribution, local jobs would arise for the collection and transportation, treatment, storage, and processing of this potentially profitable by-product. A community energy cooperative model will also aid the farmers to earn money from their new bio-energy source and thereby decrease poverty.

The key tasks of the project are to:

1. Describe the four different kinds of cocoa pods usually cultivated in six regions of Ghana for their use as bio-fuels.
2. Design, erect, and assess a small-scale bio-power electricity generation unit that burns cocoa pod husks—a waste product in production—in a gasification system, which includes a gasifier, a solar drier, a 5kWe diesel generator set, and pelletizer.
3. Prepare guidelines for organizing full-scale bio-energy schemes and their incorporation into rural communities.
4. Examine stakeholders’ perceptions of the bio-energy scheme.
5. Create community co-operatives and governance structures for cocoa-producing zones.

Besides Professor Darkwa, the Nottingham-led project team includes Dr John Calautit, Dr Mark Worall, Dr Yuehong Su and Nii Nelson, of the Buildings, Energy and Environment (BEE) Research Group; Dr Alison Mohr, from the Institute of Science and Society; Dr Karen Robertson from the Advanced Materials Research Group and the School of Chemistry’s Professor Robert Mokaya.

Nottingham academics are also partnering with the Centre for Energy, Environment and Sustainable Development (CEESD) Ghana, Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Ghana where the bio-power unit will be set up and supervised by scientists.