After winning the regional Blue Sky Awards competition, two young South African academics will compete against 12 peers from seven different countries.
The two winners who will fly the SA flag high are Qiniso Ngiba and Leane Naude. Ngiba is a chemical engineer by training, and works as a junior research engineer at paper and packaging manufacturer Mpact.
Naude is completing her MSc in chemical engineering at North West University and works at Sappi. The Blue Sky Young Researchers Innovation Award is a biennial competition for students and young researchers who are focused on forest-based science.
This can include transforming wood-based raw materials into novel products, improving forestry techniques or pulping processes or contributing to the forest bio-economy.
Applicants had to submit ideas for their research initiatives. Using the leftover pulp lignin from the pulping and papermaking process, Ngiba's study created fake humus and tested it in a plant trial.
The synthesis of artificial humus increases carbon storage in soils was shown to improve crop productivity and provides a commercial route for spent pulp liquor.
This is vital in achieving a lower carbon economy, increasing agricultural production and supporting the sector’s goal of a circular bio-economy.
Naude’s research has developed a more cost-effective purification method for lignosulphonate, an alternative to fossil-based products.
Considered a biopolymer, lignosulphonate is a by-product from the sulphite pulping of wood into pulp for the production of high strength paper grades.
This programme is sponsored at a global level by the International Council of Forest and Paper Associations (ICFPA) and locally in South Africa by the Paper Manufacturers Association of South Africa (PAMSA).
Ngiba and Naude have participated in PAMSA’s Master of Engineering Bursary Programme, an initiative that enables BSc chemical engineering students to further their studies by carrying out their Masters studies with a pulp or paper manufacturing company.
“Both projects tap into the role of the forestry, pulp and paper industry in the journey towards climate change mitigation and the circular bio-economy,” said Jane Molony, PAMSA executive director.
PAMSA will award Ngiba and Naude R15,000 and R10,000 respectively.
IOL Business