Biomass burning is an important source of trace gases such as CO2, CO and NO,
which influence regional and global atmospheric chemistry. Biomass is burnt in bush
fires as well as in households as an energy source. Even though there have been
numerous studies on domestic biofuel use in Africa over the last two decades there is
still a lack of consumption data on the continent. Biofuel is used in rural and urban
areas in Africa, but this project focuses on rural consumption. This project aims to
quantify biofuel use at representative rural sites around southern Africa and to
investigate the spatial and temporal variation. Three sites, one in the south, central and
northern parts were selected in each of seven countries (Botswana, Namibia, South
Africa, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi). Consumption rates for all fuel
types were determined by weighing the fuel used throughout the day. The survey was
conducted during the months of May 2003 to February 2004. The forms of biofuel
used over southern Africa were found to be wood, charcoal and to a lesser extent
maize residue. To obtain a consumption estimate for the whole of rural southern
Africa consumption values for Swaziland and Lesotho from previously studies were
included. The total annual rural fuelwood consumption in southern Africa is estimated
to be 54.7 ± 3.5 Tg with an average daily consumption of 2.55 kg person-1 day-1
.
South Africa has the highest consumption of wood and Swaziland the least. While
fuelwood was used in all countries charcoal was only consumed in the rural areas of
South Africa, Zambia and Mozambique. Rural southern Africa is estimated to
consume 8.1 ± 0.8 Tg of charcoal per year. Malawi was the only country to consume
maize residue at an average rate of 0.51 ± 0.16 kg person-1 day-1, leading to a
consumption of 1.8 ± 0.1 Tg yr-1 over the whole region. The total rural biofuel
consumption over southern Africa was estimated to be 64.6 ± 3.6 Tg yr-1. Namibia
and South Africa had increased consumption rates between August and October, and
Zambia shows slightly higher consumptions between May and July. The other
countries show little monthly variation with no specific seasonal trends. There was a
slight positive relationship (r2 = 0.168; p = 0.065) between consumption rate and
altitude, but the data is very scattered due to monthly variation. Slopes are only shown
to be significant between January and March. Altitude is therefore not shown to be a
significant controlling factor of biofuel consumption in this study.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/5865 |
| Date | 04 December 2008 |
| Creators | Tshikalanke, Rabelani Phillip |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
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